Does PRP Work for Hair Loss?

Hair loss affects 80% of women over 50 and 80% of men over 30, making it an extremely common but frustrating issue. Fortunately, ZENA Medical offers several treatment options, including PRP, to regrow thinning hair. PRP improves the condition of your scalp and stimulates stem cells in your hair follicles to promote fuller, healthy-looking hair.

Treating Hair Loss With PRP

People with thinning hair have many choices when seeking treatment. We recommend a consultation with a board-certified dermatologist like Dr. Zena Gabriel or other providers at ZENA Medical who are professionally trained in dermatology and hair loss disorders. Hair is essentially another type of skin, so dermatologists spend up to a year of their residency studying hair and the conditions that affect it. This extensive experience makes dermatologists uniquely qualified to address hair loss and all disorders of the scalp.

What is PRP?

PRP (platelet-rich plasma) is a frequently misunderstood and misused treatment for hair loss and many other conditions. PRP involves drawing a sample of your own blood and preparing the PRP by spinning it in a centrifuge. This process causes the blood to separate into layers. When performed correctly, a layer of plasma is formed that contains large numbers of concentrated platelets, meaning it is “platelet-rich.” This is where the effective part of PRP comes from because platelet-rich plasma has many growth factors and stimulating components.

Many providers process the blood sample and perform the procedure incorrectly, resulting in plasma that is not actually RICH in platelets. We maintain that quality matters. Not all “PRP” is platelet-rich, and just because it’s popular does not mean it’s prepared correctly or administered at a high concentration!

How Does PRP Treat Hair Loss?

Dr. Zena and her team use PRP as one component of a comprehensive 360-degree treatment plan targeted to your hair loss issue. We treat hair loss holistically and provide our patients with other powerful tools before we jump into PRP. We offer topical prescription products for the scalp, special shampoos, as well as laser treatments for thinning hair like Keralase.

PRP works because it contains growth factors that stimulate stem cells in the hair follicles. These growth factors boost the follicles, allowing them to start growing new hairs. Some providers apply PRP to an untreated scalp that hasn’t been prepared first. This method doesn’t give PRP a way to enter the skin and is largely ineffective. It’s like throwing fertilizer on cement.

A trained dermatologist will apply PRP to a properly prepared scalp. It can be applied topically (pouring it over the skin) after microneedling or other devices, or it can be administered as a series of injections. Treatment with the Keralase laser or microneedling treatments will create tiny areas of damage that allow the scalp to absorb the PRP (otherwise, PRP applied to an untreated scalp doesn’t do much).