Alopecia Areata and Dr. Angela Christiano

Despite the main focus of this blog being on androgenetic alopecia (AGA), I have made a number of posts about alopecia areata (AA) during the past year. Note that alopecia areata can be in the form of alopecia totalis or alopecia universalis.

Over 95 percent of hair loss patients suffer from AGA, also known as male pattern baldness and female pattern hair loss.

Alopecia Areata Treatment Breakthroughs

Over the past year, a lot of good news has come out regarding alopecia areata treatments involving JAK inhibitors. This is due to the great work of people such as Dr. Angela Christiano and Dr. Brett King.

Alopecia Areata Hair Loss Photo
Alopecia Areata hair loss patient from Dr. Christiano’s presentation.

In my opinion, there is also a chance that these JAK inhibitor drugs may benefit people with certain types of androgenetic alopecia. In particular, when there is an inflammatory (dandruff, itching, scaling) component involved too. However, this is pure conjecture on my part and entirely unproven.

Dr. Angela Christiano Video

Dr. Angela Christiano recently published a good video on alopecia areata, and it includes her personal experiences with the disease. There is more of a female focus in Dr. Christiano and her Columbia University team’s latest research, which is a rarity in the hair loss world.

This video is embedded below.  A few of the more interesting sections include:

  • 11:00 = I was quite surprised to read that alopecia areata affects 5.3 million people in the US, with a 1.7 percent lifetime risk.
  • 11:42 = comparison with genes involved in psoriosis and vitiligo.
  • 12:15 and 12:45 = most important part of the presentation related to research on Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitors. These include Ruxolitinib (JAK 1,2); Tofacitinib (JAK 1,2,3); Baricitinib (JAK 1,2); VX-509 (JAK 1,2); and R348 (JAK 1,2). The last three mentioned are not yet approved, while the first two are FDA approved for certain applications. You can read more about those drugs via the “Categories” section in the left hand column of this blog.
  • 12:57 = Results on mice.
  • 23:47 = Great results on a woman and later on a man.

Rick Rosner Takes Avodart for Hair Loss

Update: October 27, 2020 — Rick Rosner still takes Avodart.


This is one of the strangest stories that I have read from which I found something of relevance to write about for this blog. Rick Rosner supposedly has the second highest IQ in the world, despite spending 10 years in high school, from which he graduated at the age of 27 in 1987. He is presently unemployed.

Today, this genius takes around 50 pills per day or 38 pills per day (numbers vary depending on source). He admits that a majority of the pills he takes are probably useless. However, he does not seem to be worried about the side effects of these pills. In all likelihood, Ricks 50-pill-a-day regimen is far more dangerous than Ray Kurzweil’s primarily supplement based regimen of 150 pills per day or 250 pills per day.

The most interesting thing about Rick when it comes to hair is that:

  1. He takes Avodart (Dutasteride) as part of his regimen. It seems that he likes Avodart because it helps with prostate health, helps hair and increases testosterone (Rick is a gym addict).
  2. He had 13 mini hair transplant procedures (totaling 1,650 plugs) several decades ago when hair transplant technology was bad. He mentions the latter in his Twitter feed. It seems like his hair is pretty decent to me, in spite of the bad plugs.
  3. His topless photos on Twitter also suggest that he has no body hair, which to me is always strange (since most balding men tend to have above average body hair in my years of observation). It must be noted, however, that Rick has very little evident balding.

It is unlikely that he has been taking that drug for more than 10 years since it was only approved in the US in 2002. Did he witness a miraculous result like Dr. Marty Sawaya did on her patients?  I communicated with Rick via Twitter and he responded: