Good news about male baldness?

Consumer Reports News: June 21, 2010 12:16 PM

In a recent Consumer Reports study on hair loss, thousands of survey respondents were quite philosophical about their predicament, pointing out actual upsides to being bald: Saving time on grooming, for one, along with saving money on shampoos and conditioners.

While the subject of baldness has been the stuff of humor for ages, researchers at the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, both in Seattle, now think that a receding hairline may be beneficial to your health.

Consider the results of a study published in Cancer Epidemiology in April. It suggests that men who experience male pattern baldness—typically, the classic pattern of a receding hairline and hair thinning on the crown attributed to hormones and genetic predisposition—by age 30 have a lower risk of prostate cancer than men who aren't follicularly challenged.

While intriguing, the research is not definitive, and it would be premature to draw any conclusions. When the study came out, I contacted my colleague Chris Hendel, Consumer Reports' associate director of our Health & Family franchise, and an expert at digging into and interpreting medical studies.

Hendel noted that the findings are based on a case-control study, which, by design, has inherent limitations. The researchers looked at about 1,000 men who had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and they "matched" those men to a similar-sized group of men without prostate cancer as a control group, for comparison purposes.

The researchers asked the men, roughly ages 40 to 74, to recall what stage of balding they were at one year before onset of cancer and at age 30. (That kind of "recall" is a big limitation to the strength of the study results.) They found--compared with the men who were the controls--a reduction in relative risk of prostate cancer if a man had experienced male-pattern balding by age 30.

Hendel also pointed out that other studies looking into possible links between early onset pattern baldness and prostate cancer show either an actual increase in risk or no real change in risk whatsoever. While baldness could be good for your health, as the report suggests, it's far too early to suggest that prostate cancer risk reduction is one of the benefits of early hair loss.

Even the researchers themselves indicate that more study is needed.

— Tod Marks, senior project editor

Read about baldness treatment effectiveness (available to subscribers), find out what men and women think of hair loss and whether it's really a sign of aging.