Integral characterization of normal and alopecic hair at different degeneration stages by in-situ visible and chemical imaging
Graphical abstract
Introduction
Normal human hair usually remains a certain amount of quantity in dynamic balanced cycles from loss of old hair in telogen to growth of newly regrown hair in anagen. Hair fibers can be generally divided into three main structure units: cuticle, cortex and medulla, in them consisting of proteins, lipids, water and so on [1]. Integrity of hair, including various chemical components, distinct main structures and relatively stable quantity, is of great importance to human for scalp protection and also a signal of physiological wellness. However, hair loss, especially male-pattern alopecia, is presenting a global prevalence. According to the new reports released by WHO (World Health Organization) in 2019, the incidence of alopecia among Chinese men is approximately 20% and shows younger trend [2].
Both morphology and chemical property of hair are vulnerable to physiological and pathological factors [[3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12]]. Patients with alopecic hair (AH) in different pathological stages have different hair conditions, and it has been proved over the world that diverse causes such as aging, malnutrition, hormonal regulation, pathogens infection and congenital disease can lead to hair loss disorders [13]. Alopecia has been studied in physiology and medical science perspectives [[14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20]]and the alopecia mechanism has been revealed in different degrees [21,22]. Prior studies noted the effect of androgen to hair that androgen-regulated factors deriving from dermal papilla cells were believed to influence growth of other components of the hair follicle [20,23,24]. Some studies involved people who suffered from cancers to investigate the relationship between hair loss and diseases [25,26]. Nevertheless, targeted analysis to AH is rarely conducted. Therefore, it would be essential to simultaneously reveal the morphological and chemical differences between NH and AH and thus to impel a more comprehensive and exact AH mechanism investigation.
Infrared spectroscopic imaging, obtaining generalized vibrational spectral images by collecting hundreds of pixel spectra simultaneously, can integrally and directly reveal chemical information and spatial distribution of various components in food, chemical materials and biological tissues in microscale. Applications of infrared spectroscopic imaging cover various realms, especially in biological and material fields. It had been reported that healthy articular cartilages and osteoarthritic articular cartilages of mature dogs were distinguished by analysis of infrared spectroscopic imaging combining with support vector machine discriminant analysis [27]. Carbohydrate excipients improperly added in formula granules was recognized spatially by infrared spectroscopic imaging, revealing authenticity of commercial formula granules directly and rapidly [28]. Impurities in pure surimi were successfully recognized with extracted spectra and principal component analysis of infrared spectroscopic imaging [29,30]. Spatial distributions of primary compounds in areca nut section were obtained to analyze cancerogens which could lead to cancers in mouth and esophagus [31]. Furthermore, a recent clinical diagnosis showed prediction of epileptic seizures with positive predictive value of 100% based on infrared spectroscopy outperformed the traditional analysis of electroencephalography, offering an effective and novel detection method for human wellness [32]. Hence, infrared spectroscopic imaging and infrared spectroscopy have become a powerful tool for bio-tissue investigation.
In this study, infrared spectroscopic imaging and scanning electron microscope (SEM) were employed to comprehensively obtain external and internal properties of hair from normal and alopecic persons, aiming to reveal integral changes of AH related to chemical components distribution and surface morphology as alopecia progressed. This study would also offer a fast, eco-friendly and effective method for hair research.
Section snippets
Participants and apparatus
Volunteers of 5 male pattern alopecia were recruited from the hospital of SIMSON HAIR TRANSPLANT, and 5 normal persons were recruited from society and universities. All volunteers were males and their ages ranged from 25 to 40. Hair of alopecic persons (PAH) had the characteristic of obvious baldness accounting for at least 30% of hair-growth area on head, while hair of normal persons (PNH) had healthy hair conditions without any hairline recession (Fig. 1). Twenty hairs were sampled in vertex
Visible images
Visible images (Fig. 2) of surface texture of NH and AH were obtained at the magnification of 1000Ć and 2000Ć. It can be seen obviously that sampling areas from NH at the magnification of 2000Ć (image area is 3002Ā Ī¼m2) show compact and orderly hair scales with 7ā9 laminated structures, while AH show rough, unconsolidated and cracked hair scales with 9ā11 laminated structures at the same magnification.
Spectra extracted in ATR-IR images
Fig. 3 is ATR-IR (attenuated total reflection infrared) microspectroscopic images and the
Visible characterization
Vertical photographs of volunteers were obtained during sampling hairs from scalps. Fig. 1 shows three random selections from PNH and PAH. PNH have no hairline recession along the anterior border in the frontotemporal region, which means that no hair loss has occurred. PAH have sparse hair on the vertex and their hairline resembles the letter M. Hairlines of PAH had receded back to a point between the limit of coronal plane and the level of the external auditory meatus, and the two areas of
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Shi-Wei Hou: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing - original draft. Si-Yu He: Methodology, Formal analysis, Validation. Jun Xie:Methodology. Ming-You Li: Resources. Miao-Si Hong: Resources. Fu-Lan Guan: Investigation. Yu-Ling Hu: Resources. Yan-Li Huang: Resources. Chang-Hua Xu: Supervision, Writing - review & editing.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by Shanghai Pujiang Program (18PJ1432600), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFD0401501), and the Young and middle-aged talents cultivation project of food science and engineering plateau discipline of Shanghai Ocean University (A1-3203-19-100610).
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These authors contributed equally to this work.