How Can PRP Treatments Help With Alopecia?

I’ve talked about platelet-rich plasma (PRP) for hair loss and hair thinning which happens as a result of aging in both men and women. What about if you’ve been diagnosed with Alopecia?

Alopecia is an area on the scalp where there’s a patch of baldness also called “Alopecia Areata”. We believe that there’s some disturbance of the immune system that has generated a loss of hair in a in a particular patch which can be a difficult thing to treat. The standard treatment is to inject the area with cortisone.

Interestingly, two or three years ago the British Journal of Dermatology published a paper comparing the effectiveness of platelet-rich plasma treatments versus the standard cortisone injection. Within 12 months, 60 percent of the patients treated with platelet-rich plasma had complete resolution of their alopecia, whereas only 27 percent of those treated with a steroid injection had complete resolution. Furthermore, when they studied them for another six months, almost half of the patients that were treated with a cortisone injection had a relapse, whereas none of the platelet rich plasma patients relapsed. So if you’ve been diagnosed with Alopecia, or if your hair is just generally getting thin, give serious consideration to treatment with platelet-rich plasma.