Yeah, and here are the "brand new" FACTS for my claims - and my suggestions/hints above ...
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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23701444
Br J Dermatol. 2013 May 24. doi: 10.1111/bjd.12443.
Evidence for a polygenic contribution to androgenetic alopecia.
Heilmann S, Brockschmidt FF, Hillmer AM, Hanneken S, Eigelshoven S, Ludwig KU, Herold C, Mangold E, Becker T, Kruse R, Knapp M, Nöthen MM.
Source
Institute of Human Genetics, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany; Department of Genomics, Life & Brain Centre, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany.
Abstract
BACKGROUND:
Male pattern baldness (
androgenetic alopecia, AGA) is a highly heritable trait and the most common form of hair loss in humans. Eight genome-wide significant risk loci for AGA have been identified.
OBJECTIVES:
To determine whether a polygenic component contributes to the genetic risk for AGA.
METHODS:
This study used a German case-control sample for AGA, which comprised 581 severely affected patients and 617 controls, to determine the contribution of polygenic variance to AGA risk. The sample was divided evenly into discovery and test samples. An additive polygenic risk score was calculated from risk alleles with increasingly liberal P-values in the discovery dataset, which was then used to test for the enrichment of AGA risk score alleles in the independent test samples.
RESULTS:
The polygenic score analysis provided significant evidence for a polygenic contribution to AGA where the amount of variance explained was 1.4-4.5%.
CONCLUSION:
This study provides evidence for the
specific contribution of a polygenic component to the overall heritable risk for AGA. To some degree, the polygenic architecture of AGA might
reflect the complexity of the biological pathways involved. Further analyses and strategies that complement conventional genome-wide association studies are needed to identify these factors. These may include pathway-based analyses, the analysis of functional candidate genes and tests for epistatic effects with known loci.
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Okay, so what exactly does "highly heritable trait" mean?
You can find, for example, the simple version at Wikipedia, to get a clue:
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Heritability
The heritability of a population is the proportion of observable
differences between individuals that is due to genetic differences.
Factors including genetics, environment and random chance can all contribute to the
variation between individuals in their observable characteristics (in their "phenotypes"). Heritability thus analyzes the relative contributions of differences in genetic and non-genetic factors to the total phenotypic variance in a population. For instance, some humans in a population are taller than others; heritability attempts to identify how much genetics are playing a role in part of the population being extra tall.
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Anyway, concerning "AGA" - what exactly does it mean all in all?
Even if you find a way to replicate "
THE proper source" in the lab (on synthetic basis etc etc etc), the replicated "proper source" wouldn't really work, of course, for everyone or every (AGA-)patient. And that means, if you have found something (a proper technology etc) how to replicate THE proper source (e.g. to get hair follicles to grow properly/correct at all), you have to do it, of course, "patient-specific". And that means -provided, you have found proper solutions/technologies to accomplish that at all- the procedures per se would/could be very very costly, because THE proper solution (replication of the THE source) ISN'T as "simple" as cloning some cells in the lab ...
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