McDonald's fries may be the cure for more than just the munchies.
Besides being super tasty, a study from Yokohama National University in Japan says there is a chemical in the oil that can eliminate baldness.
Professor Junji Fukuda says the chemical dimethylpolysiloxane, a silicone used in McDonald’s fry oil to prevent splashing, can be used to produce hair follicles on mice.
"The key for the mass production of HFGs was a choice of substrate materials for the culture vessel.
We used oxygen-permeable dimethylpolysiloxane (PDMS) at the bottom of culture vessel, and it worked very well.”
When the HGFs were implanted into mice, new black hairs began to sprout.
While Fukada says the method has only been tested on mice, he and his team feel confident the results can be successfully replicated on humans.
“This simple method is very robust and promising.
We hope this technique will improve human hair regenerative therapy to treat hair loss such as androgenic alopecia (male pattern baldness). In fact, we have preliminary data that suggests human HFG formation using human keratinocytes and dermal papilla cells.”