P#50  Scalp coverage scoring documents natural worsening within less than 12 months in a majority of men with androgenetic alopecia (AGA)

Dominique Van Neste. Skinterface, Tournai, Belgium

Many methods have been proposed in concept and applied for clinical evaluation of AGA in men on the occasion of drug trials. As we became involved in clinical trial programmes, we realised that application of high-tech methods are not always possible. As there was a need for a patient and doctor "friendly" but calibrated and validated method we imagined several theoretical approaches. Those that seemed acceptable were tested experimentally. Accordingly a novel scalp coverage scoring or SCS method has emerged independently of any drug trial (application patent PCT/EP/ 01/0697). We demonstrated that SCS was correlated in vivo with the presence of growing (+) and thinning (-) hair. SCS also detected changes over time on repeat gobal photographs (GPs). In the present study GPs of male subjects participating in two separate placebo controlled trials but taking no active oral (n = 12) or topical treatment (n = 7), were taken at baseline, after 6 and/or after 12 months. Randomised GPs (as to subject, trial (source and objective) and time of follow-up) were presented one at a time to the observer. The SCS were analysed as absolute values and changes as compared to 0 (null hypothesis, t-test). One of the subjects which significantly improved reported that the change happened after interrupting oral corticosteroid therapy i.e. just before inclusion in the trial (change of SCS + 1.4). In a majority of the other subjects (11/18) we observed worsening of the condition on an individual basis (average change of SCS - 0.3). Expression of relative data is apparently a more clinically relevant modality of reporting as this detects significant variations in kinetics between panels of volunteers according to disease severity at baseline. In conclusion, the validated scalp coverage scoring procedure was able to measure natural progression of AGA in male subjects in a rather short period of time. We presume that hair maintenance or re-growth could be evaluated in real time as a first step during controlled clinical trials (statistical approach) and as a second step, in the hair clinic, for therapeutic monitoring purposes on individual patients.