DNA flow cytometry: A new technique for rapid analysis of cell-cycle kinetics in human anagen hairs

Cell Kinetics of the Human Anagen Hair Follicle

“…Previous studies have well documented that DNA-FCM is an appropriate tool for investigating proliferative cell properties in both human epidermis [16][17][18] and human hair [11,12]. The present comparative study on clearly defined segments of anagen hair follicles of healthy and psoriatic subjects revealed no remarkable differences of the data obtained from the different portions of follicular epithelium in either group except the infundibulum.…”

“…The present study provides good evi dence that DNA-FCM is a sensitive tool not only for the determination of proliferative kinetics in plucked hairs [11] but also for dis sected, i.e. completely removed hair follicles.…”

“…Our FCM investigation in hair follicles of unin volved scalps of psoriatics yielded a similar proliferative behavior for the bulbar and infundibular portions. The sensitive tech nique of DNA-FCM, meanwhile generally considered a rapid and accurate technique for the determination of major proliferative properties of isolated nuclei particularly in oncological research, has recently also been introduced into trichological studies [11 ]. By applying this method to freshly dissected anagen hairs we could analyze the major hair follicle kinetics as well as proliferative data of 4 follicular portions including the bulbar and infundibular ones.…”

“…Because of some disadvantages of histoautoradiography such as radiolabelling in vivo or in vitro, we recently introduced DNA flow cytometry (DNA-FCM) to trichological research and gained data of proliferation for both plucked and dissected anagen hairs in healthy male and female subjects [11,12]. DNA-FCM is meanwhile well recognized for delivering rapid analyses of the nuclear DNA content of large cell populations and enabling exact calculations of the percentage of cells at various cell cycle phases [13].…”

Cell Kinetics of Anagen Scalp Hairs under Physiological and Pathological Conditions

“…These autoradiographic studies on hu man hairs demonstrated the highest mitotic activity within the hair bulb with DNA-labelling indices reaching up to 35% [1][2][3][4], Flow cytometry (FCM) is also a valuable method for determining cell cycle kinetics of various tissues with a statistical accuracy su perior to histoautoradiography. Recently we introduced the DNA-FCM into trichological research to study the proliferative activity of anagen hairs [5,6], Here we report the appli cation of a combined microdissection and DNA-FCM analysis of anagen hair bulbs cut into different portions in order to obtain in sight into the segmental proliferative activi ties of the growing hair of healthy volunteers. Therefore, the hair bulb was segmented by means of microsurgical techniques at distinct anatomical levels and analyzed by DNA-FCM [7], Furthermore, the growth of scalp hair is controlled by genetic as well as hormonal fac tors.…”