Simulative Evaluation of Taurine Against Alopecia Caused by Stress in Caenorhabditis elegans - Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology - page 251

Abbreviations

Tau Taurine

Tun Tunicamycin

NGM Nematode growth medium

ER Endoplasmic reticulum

RR Rescue rate

25.1 Introduction

Hair is a characteristic feature of mammals and has significant biological usages.
Hairs grow out of the epidermis to develop a shield against potential damages
from ultraviolet light, heat, and external harmful debris. Humans have shown a
trend to eliminate hairs during the course of evolution from their ancestors. In
hair, living part exists only at the root part; however, its functional integrity
depends on the whole structure. Thus, hair can be considered as continuous func-
tional structure from root to end and the strength of hair root greatly affects the
entirety of hair.
Alopecia refers to the general sense of hair loss from the head and baldness is
usually the typical outcome of alopecia. Earlier alopecia exerts a significant
sense of frustration especially to younger generations. The cause of alopecia is
not well understood to date; however, modern stressful living conditions appear
to coincide with alopecia for humans. There are three major categories in terms
of cause and development of alopecia (Fig. 25.1 ). Alopecia results from extended
cellular stress in hair root cells along with individual genetic background.
Combined with individual genetic background, alopecia can occur at early stage of
life and intensifies with stressful circumstances. The chance for alopecia increases
with age and males are more susceptible to alopecia than females (Table 25.1 , com-
piled from Dior 2011 ) .
Extreme physical stress is believed to worsen the health of hair (Novak and
Meyer 2009 ). Among adolescents, alopecia is triggered by unusual hair care main-
tenance, such as twisting hair treatments, bleaching, and behavioral pulling of hair.
Recent studies indicate that alopecia is also caused by a type of organelle stress such
as endoplasmic reticulum stress (Gupta et al. 2009 ; Sarkar et al. 2011 ) . According
to the theory, various stresses affect the cellular conditions within stem cells in hair
follicles and the eventual apoptosis depreciates the stem cells of hair follicles. Under
circumstances, anti-ER stress compounds may reduce the occurrence of alopecia
and even avoid the symptom when its application is implemented beforehand at
high-risk groups.
A number of medicines are available to treat the symptoms related to alopecia.
Majority of the medicine has been developed to strengthen the integrity of hair at its