Male Pattern Baldness and Coronary Heart Disease

Abstract

Objective: To examine the association between male pattern baldness and the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) events.Design, Setting, and Participants: Retrospective cohort study among 22 071 US male physicians aged 40 to 84 years enrolled in the Physicians' Health Study. Of these, 19 112 were free of CHD at baseline and completed a questionnaire at the 11-year follow-up concerning their pattern of hair loss at age 45 years. Response options included no hair loss, frontal baldness only, or frontal baldness with mild, moderate, or severe vertex baldness. Main Outcome Measures:Coronary heart disease events defined as nonfatal myocardial infarction (MI), angina pectoris, and/or coronary revascularization.Results: During 11 years of follow-up, we documented 1446 CHD events in this cohort. Compared with men with no hair loss, those with frontal baldness had an ageadjusted relative risk (RR) of CHD of 1.09 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.94-1.25), while those with mild, moderate, or severe vertex baldness had RRs of 1.23 (95% CI, 1.05-1.43), 1.32 (95% CI, 1.10-1.59), and 1.36 (95% CI, 1.11-1.67), respectively (P for trend, Ͻ.001). Multivariate adjustment for age, parental history of MI, height, body mass index (weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters as a continuous variable), smoking, history of hypertension, diabetes, high cholesterol level, physical activity, and alcohol intake did not materially alter these associations. Results were similar when nonfatal MI, angina, and coronary revascularization were examined separately, and when events were analyzed among men older and younger than 55 years at baseline. Vertex baldness was more strongly associated with CHD risk among men with hypertension (multivariate RR, 1.79; 95% CI, 1.31-2.44) or high cholesterol levels (multivariate RR, 2.78; 95% CI, 1.09-7.12). Conclusion:Vertex pattern baldness appears to be a marker for increased risk of CHD events, especially among men with hypertension or high cholesterol levels.

Visible Age-Related Signs and Risk of Ischemic Heart Disease in the General Population

“…Presence of ≥1 of these visible age-related signs have been associated with increased risk of ischemic cardiovascular disease in most [6][7][8][9][10][11] but not all studies. 12,13 In contrast, male pattern baldness, grey hair, and facial wrinkles did not associate with death.…”

Established risk factors for coronary heart disease are unrelated to androgen-induced baldness in female-to-male transsexuals

“…Androgens can induce MPB in genetically susceptible men and women (Price 1999, Signorello et al 1999, and can also alter lipid profiles (Glazer 1991) and other established CHD risk factors (Asscheman et al 1994, Elbers et al 2003. Three previous studies found support for a possible association between MPB and a higher serum cholesterol and blood pressure (Trevisan et al 1993, Lotufo et al 2000 or disorders clustered in the metabolic syndrome (Matilainen et al 2000). Another study, however, found no evidence for an intermediate role of established CHD risk factors (Ellis et al 2001).…”

“…Several cohort (Herrera et al 1995, Schnohr et al 1995, Ford et al 1996, Lotufo et al 2000, Matilainen et al 2001 and a case-control study (Lesko et al 1993) have shown an association between the degree of male-pattern baldness (MPB) and myocardial infarction, coronary heart disease (CHD) events and CHD mortality. Established CHD risk factors are typically found in the metabolic syndrome and the common endocrine disorder of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) (Laws & Reaven 1993, Dunaif 1997, including hyperinsulinemia, glucose intolerance, high fasting triglycerides, low high-density lipoprotein (HDL)-cholesterol, hypertension and obesity (Dunaif 1997).…”

Androgenic Alopecia and Subclinical Atherosclerosis: Is Any Relationship?

“…Also, Trieu and Eslick in a meta-analysis, surveyed 31 studies regarding the relationship between androgenetic alopecia and cardiovascular diseases, without focusing on exclusion of risk factors and matching of androgenetic alopecia group with the controls. The authors concluded that androgenetic alopecia is a risk factor with does response relation for cardiovascular diseases [12]. The studies of Miric et al and Robora et al showed similar results as Trieu and Eslick [9,10].…”

“…Such relationship has been surveyed in many studies in which some studies approved the relationship [12][13][14][15], but the other did not [16][17][18][19]. So, according to these different paradoxical results, in this study, carotid IMT was studied in patients with androgenetic alopecia in comparison to the controls.…”