Doreen Morgan had always noticed she had a high hairline. But after going through an early menopause and with her hair beginning to thin as it does for many menopausal women, she noticed that something drastic was happening. Her once striking profile now boasted a receding hairline.

Morgan is not alone, although at times she may have felt like she was. While most people are aware that men can suffer hair loss and balding from a young age, most women don’t realise that the same will eventually happen to them. By the age of 60, 80 per cent of women are shedding their hair. This can manifest as thinning, a receding hairline or even bald patches.

These treatments may be some way off, but they are already guiding current offerings for women. Dr Bessam Farjo, who owns the Farjo Hair Institute based in Manchester, is already offering a “follicle banking” service for people in the earliest stages of loss to preserve their healthy follicles now.

“Everything is now geared to preservation and maintenance, so we like to catch these issues early on and catch the issue and preserve the hair rather than wait for it to fall out,” Farjo explains. “The future treatments are cell-based treatments, meaning we’ll be able to take different parts of cells and replicate and multiply them in the lab and then reintroduce them or inject them into someone’s scalp.

“But in our research we find that the younger hairs respond much better to these kinds of lab culturing methods than older hair. They’re able preserve their younger hairs, so that when a treatment becomes available we can access these hairs.”

The follicle banking service preserves hair at the cost of £2,500 a year for a 20-25 year period and Farjo already has female clients. However, most won’t need to wait that long to move forward with replenishing their hair: Farjo predicts his clinic will be able to offer full stem cell regeneration treatment within 12 months.

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