Going bald at 20? There are more reasons to worry. A new study has indicated that men who start going bald early may be at an increased risk of prostate cancer later.
French scientists compared 388 prostate cancer patients and 281 healthy men and found that those with the disease were twice as likely to have started going bald when they were 20.
Men who started to lose hair at the ages of 30 or 40 did not have high risk of developing the disease. The study, published in the journal Annals of Oncology, also did not find any link between the pattern of hair loss and the development of cancer.
Androgenic alopecia, also known as male pattern baldness, is a common disorder affecting almost 50 per cent of men. It is usually seen in older men, but it may arise precociously.
"We need a way of identifying those men who are at high risk of developing the disease and who could be targeted for screening.
Balding at the age of 20 may be one of these easily identifiable risk factors and more work needs to be done now to confirm this," Prof Philippe Giraud of Paris Descartes University and European Georges Pompidou Hospital, who led the research, said.
The men were asked about their personal history of prostate cancer, if any, and any balding patterns they had at the ages of 20, 30 and 40.
The men with prostate cancer were diagnosed with the disease between the ages of 46 and 84.
Only three men reported vertex hair loss and none reported a combination of frontal and vertex hair loss at the age of 20, but the data revealed that any degree of balding - reported in 37 prostate cancer patients and 14 healthy men - was associated with double the risk of cancer. This trend was lost at ages 30 and 40.
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