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EGCG Lengthened Human Hair Follicles in Culture

Green-tea EGCG has an enzyme paper and a follicle paper, and they answer different questions. Hiipakka showed potent 5-alpha-reductase inhibition in cell-free assays and not in whole cells. Kwon and colleagues asked what EGCG does to human hair follicles and to the dermal papilla cells that sit at the base of those follicles. Folli-Activ includes EGCG from green tea. Kwon's experiments used purified EGCG from Sigma, stated as greater than 95 percent pure by HPLC. They did not use a Folli-Activ capsule.

Organ culture: thirty follicles, ten days

Scalp tissue came from the occipital region of five healthy men aged 20 to 31. Anagen follicles were dissected and cut to about 2.5 millimetres from the base of the dermal papilla. Thirty anagen follicles from three volunteers, ten follicles per subject, were cultured for 10 days in Williams E medium. EGCG was added at 0.1, 1, or 5 micromolar, and medium plus EGCG were changed every other day.

EGCG caused significant human hair-follicle elongation ex vivo. At 0.1 micromolar, elongation was 123.0 plus or minus 9.0 percent of vehicle-treated controls. At 1 micromolar it was 121.6 plus or minus 7.1 percent of controls. At 5 micromolar, growth reached 181.2 plus or minus 15.8 percent of controls, P less than 0.05. The culture result is a length result against vehicle, in follicles already in anagen, over 10 days. It is not a six-month photograph trial in men with androgenetic alopecia.

Dermal papilla cells: proliferation, Erk, Akt, Bcl-2

Dermal papilla cells were cultured and proliferation was read with an MTT assay. Across 0.01 to 0.5 micromolar, EGCG enhanced proliferation of human dermal papilla cells. Phosphorylated Erk rose after 1 hour of EGCG in a dose-dependent manner. Akt phosphorylation increased. Bcl-2 expression rose and Bax expression fell, which lifts the Bcl-2/Bax ratio in the anti-apoptotic direction. The authors describe these as dual proliferative and anti-apoptotic effects on dermal papilla cells.

The dermal papilla is the fibroblast cluster inside the follicle bulb that Kwon's introduction calls essential for hair-growth control in the normal cycle and in androgenetic alopecia. The cycle they name has three phases: anagen, catagen, and telogen. EGCG in this experiment pushed papilla cells toward proliferation and away from the Bax-side of the apoptotic balance, in culture.

Four days of topical EGCG on three scalps

The in vivo arm was small and biochemical. Ten percent EGCG in ethanol, or ethanol vehicle, was applied daily for four successive days to two regions of the occipital scalp of three volunteers. Treated areas of about 1 by 1.5 centimetres were then excised. Dermal papillae were isolated and analysed by Western blot. Bcl-2 expression in those papilla samples increased more than twofold compared with vehicle controls, and Bax moved in the opposite direction, in line with the culture blots. This arm is a four-day protein measurement in three people. It is not a hair-count endpoint, and the route was topical ethanol, not an oral capsule.

What to pair with this paper, and what to leave out

Esfandiari and Kelly gave female mice with spontaneous hair loss a 50 percent green-tea polyphenol fraction in drinking water for six months. Significant regrowth occurred in 33 percent of treated mice, P = 0.014, and in none of the water controls. That is a mixed polyphenol fraction in mice, useful as a second green-tea dataset, and it is not the Kwon micromolar curve.

Hiipakka's whole-cell enzyme result still stands next to Kwon. Follicle elongation and papilla proliferation do not rewrite the finding that unmodified EGCG failed to inhibit 5-alpha-reductase inside intact cells in that enzyme paper. Folli-Activ's EGCG line rests on the follicle-culture and papilla data for a growth-signal claim, and on the cell-free assay for an enzyme claim, each kept inside its own method.

Packs

The culture used occipital anagen follicles from healthy volunteers, not miniaturized vertex follicles from men with patterned thinning. That distinction keeps the 181 percent figure attached to the organ-culture model Kwon actually ran.

EGCG from green tea is in the 90-capsule Folli-Activ bottle, brand MY NPM FOLLI-ACTIV. On this site, 1 bottle is RM169, 3 bottles are RM447, and 6 bottles are RM699 with free shipping. Checkout is by card. The 181 percent elongation figure belongs to 5 micromolar EGCG in a 10-day human follicle culture. It does not belong to a claim that the retail capsule was Kwon's test article.

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