Each follicular unit of hair has blood vessels, glands,
nerves, skin, and fat. It takes all this plus a growth center and the right
genes and nutrition to make hair grow. Since by definition hair is an organ,
transplanting the hair from someone else is like transplanting a heart, kidney,
lung, etc.
One may tend to think that a person (a Family, friend or
well wisher) with same blood group if willing to donate hair to another
person should be an easy solution for people with hair loss but it is not that
easy a solution!
Generally hair
transplantation from one person to another (called Allogenic or Homologous
Transplant) who could be living person or a dead person (Cadaveric
Transplant) carries the similar risks
as organ (liver, heart, kidney) transplants.
Transplant from
the animal fur to human head is called Heterogenous or Xeno Transplant.
There is a
1. Risk of
rejection and failure
2. Wastes money
and effort of surgery
3. Lifelong use
of anti-rejection medication that could lead to further health complications
4. Transmission
of some diseases.
5.It involves
surgery on the donor as well
6. There are
medico legal aspects to it besides ethical issues: such as possibility of
people selling their hair for money in future.
Such experiment has been done
before without success (http://www.hairsite.com/hair-loss-articles/article308-person-to-person-hair-transplant.htm)
Hair from a newborn
baby or identical twins (they have same Genetic Blue print) might be immune
privileged (it seems to work for a heart transplant), but again, who would
endorse such a donor? Incidence of transplant from one identical twin to
another has worked in the past but the problem is that when one twin has
balding, so does the other.
There are some
research indicating that Anagen Bulb part of Human hair follicle is Immune
Privileged (i.e. protected from Host Rejection)
http://www.nature.com/jidsp/journal/v8/n2/full/5640115a.html
). More research may open a new vista in this field in future.
Rosati et al.
reported the case that the bone marrow transplant
patients could undergo an allotransplant of hair from
the same bone marrow donor. Jahoda et al. (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v402/n6757/full/402033a0.html)
