By Emily Murray

Male pattern baldness is something that most men begin fearing long  before those dreaded pieces of hair start departing. While it is a condition that is inconvenient and often times embarrassing, it fortunately isn’t something that damages a man’s health – perhaps just his ego.

Regardless, men are often very bothered by their hair loss.

When you look at the statistics however, it’s easy to see this is far from an uncommon problem. Male pattern baldness happens to nearly 80 percent of men under 70 years of age and currently there are certain treatments that help stop hair loss, but there is no cure for the condition. Typically this type of balding happens in a “u-shaped” pattern around the head as the hair continues to thin. Recently, however, the cause of this type of hair loss has been discovered and that could mean we are that much closer to a cure.

A study published in the March 21 issue of Science Transitional Medicine declared that men with elevated levels of a protein called prostaglandin D2 (PGD2) on their scalp were more apt to loose their hair. This type of protein is one of many that are also known to block the growth of hair.

The hope for finding a cure comes from the idea that if their is a way to possibly block this kind of protein, perhaps the hair follicles will spring back to life and sprout new growth. For men, this could be a complete game changer.

The research that was conducted in order to identify the cause of this hair loss included looking at the samples of 17 balding  men. When the areas of hair were compared to the bald areas, they discovered the level of PGD2 was 3 times higher in the areas without hair.