Neurological Correlates

by Shakotte

(via Flickr Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution License)

Well, here it is: lush eyelashes from a glaucoma med. Maybe a cure for baldness.

I was thinking about eyelashes two (three?) Thanksgivings ago when my friend’s aunt was telling me about her second husband’s father (now deceased) , “Frank the Eyelash.” He was in “the family” they say and was called “Frank the eyelash” because he would pull out the eyelashes of those who couldn’t pay the “protection” money. So, unfortunately, when I hear “eyelash” my Skinnerian response is to put my hands over my eyes and scream, “I’ll pay! I’ll pay! Take my money!”

Glaucoma medicine, containing a prostaglandin-prodrug molecule, bimatoprost, causes lush eyelash growth (”eylash hypertrichosis”, see a review article here, and a Pubmed abstract from 2001 here, on a related molecule, and then you can click related articles to see more current studies). This may be useful for hair growth in other types of hair, given its mode of action. Minidoxol acts by encouraging prostaglandin synthesis - this idea is just to add the prostaglandin directly.

I thought this was interesting because the molecule is a prostaglandin F2α receptor agonist . F2α prostaglandin receptors are found during pregnancy — and people sometimes get lush hair when pregnant. Oxytocin stimulates the release of prostaglandin F2α during preganancy. So, there you go: prostaglandin F2α and lush hair. That may explain why women don’t go bald — because women produce more oxytocin which stimulates more prostaglandin F2α which grows hair. Jus’ sayin.

Cosmetic therapies are a growth area in the biopharma market. Pricing is tough, though because cosmetic applications are not reimbursed with insurance. If the molecule is an old one and the cosmetic use is new (which I suspect is the case here) then it may be tough to get patent coverage — and competition may take away the profit margins.

Perhaps there would be insurance reimbursement if you are diagnosed with trichotillomania and this is a therapeutic, rather than a cosmetic application. Although hair-pulling (including eyelash pulling) is related to anxiety and obsessive/compulsive disorders, apparently the behavior is more toward the impulse-end, rather than the compulsive end, of the scale (the paper cited is in pediatrics; children are frequently treatable). Maybe if they can’t get by with glaucoma, trichotillomania will suddenly become a very common condition among those who are sick of runny mascara.

Now I have written the sum total of everything interesting I know about eyelashes.