Cancer and hair loss: what happens and how to combat this phenomenon

Unfortunately, today the onset of new cases of sick subjects leads to analyze the phenomenon of hair loss for cancer treatments.

As is well known, one of the consequences of treatment with chemotherapy drugs is to lead to hair loss.

In this case, however, it must be emphasized that this is a condition which, in most cases, is transitory and therefore has solutions. It remains, however, interesting to understand what happens during a chemotherapy treatment and why hair tends to fall out.

Chemotherapy and hair loss: which connection?

The first clarification that must be made is that not all chemotherapy treatments are the same, because the medicines used differ and, therefore, also the effects of the latter on the patient undergoing treatment.

There are, for example, some chemotherapy drugs, such as fluorouracil and methotrexate, which rarely lead to hair loss. Usually these drugs are used for the treatment of colon or lung cancer, but also in the case of metastatic breast cancer.

In other cases, however, medicines administered for the treatment of cancer may have hair loss as a contraindication. What happens in these specific cases? This causes alopecia. Industry experts are well aware that there are chemotherapy drugs that have this as a contraindication. Usually, those who are treated with anthracyclines and taxanes have hair loss as a consequence. These drugs, which are used only in certain cases, are catalogued as cytotoxic drugs that go, therefore, to attack the cells to prevent their reproduction. Unfortunately, in these cases, healthy cells such as hair follicles are also affected.

This happens because, just like tumor cells, hair follicles tend to reproduce extremely quickly and, therefore, it can happen that they are affected.

Often, then, people tend to think that radiotherapy can lead to hair loss. In this case, however, a clarification must be made. What has been said is true only if the treatment affects the leather area.
As said, the hair then tends to grow back in most cases at the end of the treatment. One must, however, consider the duration of the treatment itself and the amount of medication or radiation that has been used for the treatment. It must be said that it is very rare that the hair does not grow back and does not return to normal, even within a few months.

This is an aspect that should never be underestimated and that, of course, can also have an excellent impact on the psychological factor, so important in the fight against what is defined as the disease of the century.