Abstract

Hair care represents an important sector of personal care. Recent advances in the knowledge of hair physiology and new developments in the field of surfactants, silicones, dyes and the introduction of actives typically used in anti ageing skin care products have driven advances in the products used to wash, soften, colour and style human hair. As recent research has revealed, also protection from solar UV radiation plays a fundamental role in preserving hair integrity. To make the picture more complete, the growing awareness that besides physiological differences also ethnic differences play a role in the development of increasingly specialised products and hair care solutions. Finally, last but not least, the progress of molecular biology and biotechnology allows today’s researchers to investigate hair in an unprecedented detail.
Literature has earned a lot of significant additions in the last period of time. We have therefore decided to provide our readers a literature review of recent relevant literature on hair biology, ethnic differences and novel hair care ingredients.

HAIR PHYSIOLOGY AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY

Profiling mRNA of the Graying Human Hair Follicle Constitutes a Promising State-of-the-Art Tool to Assess Its Aging: An Exemplary Report
By Eva M J Peters, Christiane Liezmann, et. al. J Invest Dermatol. 133:1150-1160, 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/jid.2012.462
Abstract
Determining hitherto uninvestigated and safe targets to halt the aging process is important in our aging society. Graying is a hallmark of the aging process and may be used to identify aging tissue for comparative analysis. Here we analyzed differential gene expressions between pigmented, gray, and white human scalp skin hair follicles (HFs) from identical donors. Forming intersections between five donors identified 194/192 downregulated and 186/177 upregulated genes in gray/white HFs. These included melanogenesis (tyrosinase; tyrosinase-related protein 1)- and melanosome structure (Melan-A; Pmel17)–associated genes and regulation of melanocyte relevant tyrosine kinases. Alongside these expected changes, regulated genes included nonmelanocyte-related genes associated with aging as well as ...