Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

STEM CELLS

Compression as a driver of hair loss

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology volume 22, page 775 (2021)Cite this article

Subjects

Hair growth and maintenance is supported by hair follicle stem cells (HFSCs), which go through cycles of proliferation and rest throughout animal life. The hair shaft — the portion of a hair that extends beyond the skin surface — is an inert structure (composed mostly of dead, keratinized cells) and is generally not considered to be involved in the regulation of the HFSC cycle. Xie et al. now show that the hair shaft regulates the size of the HFSC niche and consequently HFSC maintenance. Smaller niches compress HFSCs, which contributes to HFSC apoptosis and depletion, leading to hair loss.

This is a preview of subscription content

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

References

Original article

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology http://www.nature.com/nrm/

    Paulina Strzyz

Authors
  1. Paulina Strzyz
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paulina Strzyz.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Strzyz, P. Compression as a driver of hair loss. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 22, 775 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41580-021-00426-x

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41580-021-00426-x

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing