Do Steroids Cause Baldness?

Do Steroids Cause Baldness? The quick answer? Anabolic steroids are thought to be associated with faster or more severe hair loss, and that some steroids can impact healthy hair growth, but this comes with caveats and nuances that mean other steroids are perfectly safe and an essential way to manage your health.

Corticosteroids are commonly prescribed medications and used to manage a wide range of medical conditions. Anabolic steroids, which are legally available only with a prescription, are typically taken to improve muscle mass, but also to treat specific conditions like some types of anaemia.

While there are lots of myths about the use of steroids, and whether they contribute to baldness or accelerate hair loss, this really depends on the type of steroid you might be taking and whether you’re genetically predisposed to pattern hair loss.

Corticosteroids and the Potential for Hair Loss

As we’ve touched on, corticosteroids are widely used medical treatments for a long list of conditions, including some steroid-based hair-loss creams.

Some corticosteroids list thinning hair as a possible side effect, albeit rare, but this isn’t thought to apply to all or most corticosteroids. If there is an unlikely correlation between taking a new prescription steroid and changes to hair density, you should see this stop once you’ve switched to a different medication under the supervision of your doctor.

One example that illustrates why there isn’t a straightforward answer is prednisolone, a medication used to manage lupus and arthritis, among many other conditions. It works to replicate natural steroids, which patients may be deficient in.

Although not a major side effect, which is considered anything that impacts 1% of patients or more, prednisolone does list scalp hair thinning as an unusual side effect, but it is also used within some treatments for alopecia areata. [1]

Therefore, the likelihood of experiencing changes to hair growth will depend on the reason a corticosteroid has been prescribed and how you react to that medication.

Links Between Anabolic Steroids and Hair Loss or Baldness

Anabolic steroids are a very different story, and there are clinical studies that have shown that a percentage of people taking these drugs, primarily men, could see hair loss as a result.

That’s because anabolic steroids are synthetic male hormones that elevate levels of testosterone to achieve increases in muscle mass and athletic performance, and can affect the levels of androgens within the body.

A person who is already predisposed to androgenetic alopecia, or pattern hair loss, could therefore see that hair loss starts sooner than it may have otherwise, or that continued use of anabolic steroids has a progressive impact on the pace at which their hair thins.

Likewise, anabolic steroids can activate production of dihydrotestosterone, or DHT, a main culprit behind the speed at which pattern hair loss occurs. Excessive DHT can stimulate hair loss, though there are treatments that may help combat it.

A study that looked at the links between anabolic steroids and hair loss more closely found that an initial 2% of participants reported hair loss after taking these drugs, increasing to 12% within 3.5 months, which shows why continued exposure to anabolic steroids is more likely to have noticeable impacts. [2]

Treating and Preventing Hair Loss Caused By Steroids

The most obvious advice is to avoid abuse of anabolic steroids unless they have been prescribed for a diagnosed medical need. While short-term hair loss may be reversible, sustained exposure to higher doses of these drugs can cause permanent baldness, which can be corrected only with a hair transplant.

In other cases, and where patients are taking corticosteroids under the advice of a medical professional, the best way forward could be to:

• Consult with your GP to see whether there is an alternative corticosteroid you could switch to that may not have similar side effects.
• Continue to review your dosage where relevant and focus on living a healthy lifestyle and taking care of your scalp and hair to prevent avoidable thinning.
• Use topical treatments like finasteride, which controls elevated DHT levels in men, or opt for an alternative like minoxidil, which can stimulate healthy hair growth in men and women, or slow down the progression of pattern hair loss.

If you’ve seen sustained hair loss, can’t change your medication, have established that this isn’t related to steroid use, and haven’t seen any improvement in your hair growth, there are treatments available that we’ll summarise next.

Tackling Long-Term Hair Loss After Steroid Use

Once hair follicles become dormant and inactive, there are non-surgical therapies that can prompt those follicles back into a growth phase. This does depend, though, on a clinical assessment of your scalp and hair, which you can arrange during our free initial consultation services. Options can include:

• Laser hair therapies, which use red light low-level lasers to boost blood flow and encourage follicles to activate and produce fresh growth.
• Platelet-rich plasma treatments, which involve the extraction and separation of platelet-rich plasma from your blood. This is reinjected into areas impacted by hair loss and has a similar effect.

If hair loss is extensive and follicles have become damaged beyond repair, you may also wish to consider a hair transplant, where a hair restoration professional will select healthy follicles from other areas of the scalp and transplant these carefully into the desired location.

The relevance of each of these treatments will vary between patients, and as always, the best advice is to schedule a consultation where we’ll be happy to discuss these interventions in greater detail.

References

1. Mayo Clinic: Prednisolone
2. National Library of Medicine: Hair Loss in Athletic Testosterone Use in Males