Muhammad Anees, Hira Tariq, Saelah Batool, Nouman Bashir Azam, Iqra Mariam, Zahida Rani, Shahbaz Aman.
Efficacy of platelet rich plasma therapy in patients of androgenic alopecia: a myth or fact!.
J Pak Assoc Derma Jan ;33(3):841-5.

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of platelet rich plasma in patients of androgenic alopecia attending the dermatology department of a tertiary care hospital in Lahore.   Methods: This descriptive case series was conducted at the Department of Dermatology, Services Hospital, Lahore over six months. 77 patients of both genders, aged between 18-45 years who presented with androgenic alopecia were enrolled and treated with injection of platelet rich plasma. Outcome was assessed in terms of improvement in hair quality and thickness by patient self-assessment questionnaire on a linear analogue 2 scale of 5- 26 scores. Treatment was labelled effective if the score was less than 12, four weeks after the completion of all 4 sessions. A written informed consent was taken from each patient. Data was entered and analyzed using SPSS version 21.   Results: The mean age of patients was 29.2±9.2 years. Majority (n=51, 66.2%) of the patients were aged under 30 years. There were 52 (67.5%) male and 25 (32.5%) female patients with a male to female ratio of 2.1:1. 31 (40.3%) patients had Grade-II while 38 (49.4%) patients had Grade-III alopecia. Only 8 (10.3%) patients had Grade-IV alopecia. Platelet-rich plasma treatment was effective in 65 (84.4%) patients as per operational definition. There was no statistically significant difference in the frequency of efficacy across various age (p-value=0.972) and gender (p-value=0.944) groups. However, it decreased insignificantly with increasing grade of alopecia; Grade-II vs. Grade-III vs. Grade-IV (87.1% vs. 84.2% vs. 75.0%; p-value=0.701).   Conclusion: Platelet-rich plasma therapy was found extremely effective in patients of mild to moderate androgenic alopecia which along with cost-effectiveness, simplicity and safety of procedure advocate its preferred use in future practice.  

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