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Going bald? You may want to check heart over hair first
Early Baldness, Greying Spike Risk Of Cardiac Disease 5-Fold: Research
Radha.Sharma@timesgroup.com

Ahmedabad: Alert for young men struggling with a receding hairline— the danger may extend beyond the cosmetic. A research by a team of cardiologists associated with Ahmedabad-based UN Mehta Institute of Cardiology on more than 1,900 individuals has revealed that those who have male pattern baldness and early greying of hair have more than five times higher risk of getting heart disease. The research covered nearly 850 men under 40 years of age with heart disease and 1,050 healthy relatives, including brothers, first cousins and in some cases fathers as well.

The connect was brought forth in the paper titled ‘Androgenic alopecia, premature greying and hair thinning as independent predictors of coronary artery disease (CAD) in Asian males’ carried out by doctors Kamal Sharma, Dhammdeep Humane, Komal Shah ,Sachin Patil, Riyaz Charaniya and Jayesh Meniaya.

“Internationally, there have been studies which link early male baldness pattern and greying of hair with heart disease. We explored this connect in the local milieu of Western Indian and found that young men under 40 years who had androgenic alopecia and premature greying of hair indeed had more than 500% higher chance of getting CAD. Hair thinning, though, raised the risk by three times only,” says principal investigator Dr Kamal Sharma.

Dr Sharma said that the study found that nearly 50% of heart attack patients had androgenic alopecia commonly known as male pattern baldness as compared to around 27% healthy counterparts.