Solving a Biological Puzzle: How Stress Causes Gray Hair
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When Marie Antoinette was captured during the French Revolution, her hair reportedly turned white overnight. In more recent history, John McCain experienced severe injuries as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War -- and lost color in his hair.
For a long time, anecdotes have connected stressful experiences with the phenomenon of hair graying. Now, for the first time, Harvard University scientists have discovered exactly how the process plays out: stress activates nerves that are part of the fight-or-flight response, which in turn cause permanent damage to pigment-regenerating stem cells in hair follicles.
The study, published in Nature, advances scientists' knowledge of how stress can impact the body.
"Everyone has an anecdote to share about how stress affects their body, particularly in their skin and hair -- the only tissues we can see from the outside," said senior author Ya-Chieh Hsu, the Alvin and Esta Star Associate Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard. "We wanted to understand if this connection is true, and if so, how stress leads to changes in diverse tissues. Hair pigmentation is such an accessible and tractable system to start with -- and besides, we were genuinely curious to see if stress indeed leads to hair graying. "
Bing Zhang, Sai Ma, Inbal Rachmin, Megan He, Pankaj Baral, Sekyu Choi, William A. Gonialves, Yulia Shwartz, Eva M. Fast, Yiqun Su, Leonard I. Zon, Aviv Regev, Jason D. Buenrostro, Thiago M. Cunha, Isaac M. Chiu, David E. Fisher, Ya-Chieh Hsu. Hyperactivation of sympathetic nerves drives depletion of melanocyte stem cells. Nature, 2020; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-1935-3
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