Advanced Hair Studios ambassador Shane Warne. Photo: Getty Images
Teenage boys will be able to take measures to prevent hair loss using a new genetic test that predicts if a person will lose their hair, a hair treatment group says.
Advanced Hair Studio (AHS), a global company offering laser and strand-by-strand hair treatments, will introduce a DNA test just in time for Christmas, with former cricketers and company ambassadors, Shane Warne and Graham Gooch, holding a launch for the product next week.
Warne, who became a client of Advanced Hair Studio in 2007, said the addition of 'this revolutionary test... means that teenagers can now start treatment to prevent hair loss prior to the male pattern baldness cycle starting'.
Melbourne-based founder and chief executive of AHS Carl Howell said the company was 'proud to add this test to our treatments and procedures'.
'The HairDX genetic test allows men as young as 18 who are concerned about hair loss to do something about it early,' he said.
Mr Howell said this DNA test was an improvement on the original test, which the company had been using for a couple of years.
Hair loss can affect people 'quite drastically', Mr Howell told Fairfax Media, and said that he had 'seen extreme cases of depression... generally in younger individuals'.
'As we get older, we tend to sort of live with whatever problems we might have,' Mr Howell said.
'But it can bother some people. Nobody wants to lose their hair.'
Mr Howell said his company used all FDA approved, hair-growth pharmaceuticals, and that the science of the future was in predicting 'all sorts of issues'.
'In the future, science will be predicting that we may be susceptible to cancer. Now is only the beginning of it,' he said. However, Professor David Castle from the University of Melbourne, who specialises in body image disorders, said it 'worried him when people made claims for prevention'.
'I haven't seen the science behind this particular project, but I would say that in general, medicine is poor at predicting things,' he told Fairfax Media.
'There is a certain genetic market out there, and it's a very inexact science. Medicine can't predict who will get cancer or a heart attack, so hair loss would not be much different.'
He said young men already faced 'a lot of pressure to conform to a certain look', and that 'getting these kids really concerned at a young age and getting them on these prevention techniques' could result in financial and health consequences.
'They're not cheap, these prevention treatments,' Professor Castle said. 'Also, they could be taking some of these treatments for their whole lives, and some of them would have some side effects.'
The company had previously come under consumer watchdog scrutiny in both Australia and England, with Consumer Affairs Victoria including several complaints it received regarding Advanced Hair Studio and refunding dissatisfied customers in its 2007-08 report.
The consumer group Choice also reported that in 2009, British advertising regulators Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banned Advanced Hair Studio's ad featuring Shane Warne, after upholding a complaint about it being misleading.
When Fairfax Media contacted Consumer Affairs Victoria about the complaints, a spokeswoman said the consumer watchdog was monitoring the company's conduct.
The watchdog also warned customers to be careful when 'it comes to promises about hair loss treatments'.
'While a miracle cure may be tempting, Consumer Affairs Victoria recommends that you do some research, use a qualified medical practitioner and get a second opinion. Remember - if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is,' the spokeswoman said in an email.
A spokesman for Choice said that consumers could lose a lot of money on balding treatments that don't work and recommended caution on this 'latest miracle test'.
Mr Howell said out of the 'thousands of ads we have run... one adjudication in the UK in 2009 was picked up', which was in relation to 'there being no evidence at the time that laser could grow or retard hair growth'.
He said that since then, research had proven that laser-stimulated hair growth, and that ASA had given Advanced Hair Studio 'approval to advertise that laser therapy stimulates hair growth' in the UK.
Mr Howell said that 'over the 30-plus years we have been trading, in excess of 250,000 men and women have used our services.
'If there have been a couple of dozen people in that time who have not been satisfied, then that's less than .01 per cent. That's a pretty good innings and we're still batting as good, if not better, than Don Bradman's average.'
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