
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 31, 1995                   TAG: 9505310097
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: C-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

GENE COULD AID BALD TREATMENTS

Scientists are close to identifying a hair-growth gene responsible for an extremely rare disease that is most likely the source of ancient werewolf legends, a finding that serves as a dramatic reminder of humans' evolutionary proximity to their animal predecessors.

The disease, called congenital generalized hypertrichosis, is characterized by excessive amounts of hair on the face and upper body. When the hair is shaved off, however, victims appear normal, thereby stimulating the belief that werewolves were seemingly normal people who underwent a mysterious metamorphosis in the light of a full moon.

Verified victims of the disease, who have numbered perhaps 50 since the Middle Ages, have often worked in circuses as ``ape men,'' ``wolf men'' or ``human werewolves.''

Although identification of the gene may have little practical value for victims of the disorder, it may shed much more light on the regulation of hair growth, a subject about which scientists know surprisingly little. That, in turn, could eventually lead to new treatments for baldness.

Once scientists learn ``what the gene is and how it works, we will have gone a long way toward understanding the causes of baldness in people,'' said developmental biologist Gail Martin of the University of California, San Francisco. ``That has tremendous psychological and commercial value. Hair growth is very important to people.''

An international team headed by molecular geneticist Pragna I. Patel of the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston reports in today's edition of the journal Nature Genetics that they have narrowed the location of the gene to a small region of the X chromosome, one of the two sex-determining chromosomes.

Their search for the precise location is proceeding slowly, however, because they have not been able to identify enough victims of the disorder to use conventional gene identification techniques. All of their studies have been conducted on one Mexican family that has 18 affected members.

The excessive hair growth caused by the disorder is probably a typical example of what scientists term an atavistic genetic defect - a mutation that unleashes a gene that has been suppressed during evolution. Human ancestors were once covered with hair from head to foot.

During the course of evolution, they did not actually lose the gene that produced the excessive hair, researchers believe. Instead, the normal activity of that gene was curtailed. The defect in the Mexican family simply allows that gene to function once again.

by CNB