Baldness — the old and what's coming

Summary

Baldness isn't just one disease, and that's the first thing this page's table shows. Male and female androgenetic, alopecia areata, and diffuse shedding don't respond to the same treatment — and three of the rows here (baricitinib, ritlecitinib, deuruxolitinib) are for areata, not pattern baldness. Swapping one for the other is the costliest mistake in this topic. The survey separates what has registration in Brazil from what has only promise. Minoxidil (23 active registrations), finasteride (27), and dutasteride (15) hold up the base. On the new side, clascoterone already has an active registration here — but in the anti-acne products class, not for hair. And PP405, which is already sold as a research powder, has 1 indexed article and 0 phase 3 trials.

Four diseases, one word

Before any numbers: androgenetic alopecia (the male and female pattern), areata (autoimmune, patchy), telogen effluvium (diffuse shedding, postpartum, thyroid, diet), and the cicatricial ones, like frontal fibrosing alopecia, are different diseases. This page's search crosses each treatment with alopecia or hair loss precisely to avoid mixing minoxidil's hypertension literature with its hair literature.

Three rows escape this cross-referencing purpose, and the declared query shows it: clascoterone, ritlecitinib and deuruxolitinib were searched by their plain name, because the name is already specific enough. Baricitinib, which is used for many things, was cross-referenced with "alopecia areata" — without that, the number would be the one for arthritis.

The condition column, as elsewhere on the site, is the Condition field copied from the phase 3 records that the search itself returned. It's where you can see that baricitinib, ritlecitinib, and deuruxolitinib are in areata, and that minoxidil, finasteride, and clascoterone are in androgenetic.

No number on this page came from the site's secondary source.

How much evidence exists, compound by compound

The numbers below were compiled by me on September 12, 2026, on PubMed and ClinicalTrials.gov. Each row's query is written out in full, next to the number, so anyone can repeat it and contradict me — and so the script that rechecks this site's counts can run all of them.

The condition column is not a claim about mechanism: it's the Condition field copied from the phase 3 records that the search itself returned. When there is no phase 3 record, the cell says so.

What exists in phase 3, and who it belongs to

Article count measures academic attention, not outcome evidence. The table below separates what has a registered phase 3 trial — and shows the largest registration the search returned in each row, with the declared number of participants and the sponsor.

A registration is not a result. A recruiting phase 3 trial is declared intent with money behind it, and nothing more than that.

Where the numbers don't add up

• Clascoterone is registered in Brazil, and it's not for hair. 1 active registration, WINLEVI, anti-acne products class. The active ingredient existing in the pharmacy isn't the same as the presentation and the alopecia indication existing — and that's exactly where the gray market tends to settle in.
• PP405 is the clearest case of a name sold before it exists. 1 article on PubMed, 1 registered study, 0 phase 3, and no registration in the database. There's no product: there's a research program, and a name that's already circulating for sale.
• VDPHL01 shows the opposite pattern: 0 articles on PubMed and 3 phase 3 trials, the two largest with 552 and 480 participants, sponsored by Veradermics. Anyone searching PubMed concludes it doesn't exist; anyone searching the registry sees a thousand people enrolled.
• Pyrilutamide follows the same pattern, with a Chinese sponsor. 1 indexed article, 2 phase 3 trials with 756 and 740 participants, sponsored by Kintor. No active registration.
• The procedures have literature and almost no phase 3 trials. Hair PRP has 533 articles and 0 phase 3 trials; transplant has 1,655 articles and 0. Publication volume, here, measures clinical practice — not a registration program.
• Scalp exosomes: 173 articles, 16 registered studies, and 1 phase 3, with 30 participants. The vial's identity problem is described on the exosomes page, and it applies in full here: an unregistered human injectable is not a cosmetic.
• 6 of the 18 lines have no phase 3 trial registered. These are Spironolactone, Bicalutamide, PP405, hair PRP, low-level laser, hair transplant.

In Brazil

I searched every active ingredient in the open data on registered medicines, downloaded on September 12, 2026 — 43,508 rows, counting only Active status. The therapeutic class column is the one the dataset itself declares.

It's the most useful piece of data in this table. Minoxidil appears in the hair-loss class; finasteride and dutasteride, as alpha-reductase inhibitor and urinary-tract products; spironolactone, as diuretic; bicalutamide, as antineoplastic; ritlecitinib, as immunosuppressant. Three of these classes — diuretic, antineoplastic, immunosuppressant — are not hair classes, and it's the database itself that says so, without my having to state anything about each product's label.

Procedures — PRP, microneedling, laser, transplant — are not in this table because they have no active ingredient. Not being here is not a signal of anything about them.

References

1. Public ClinicalTrials.gov API, version 2 — the source for all the study and phase 3 counts on this page.
2. PubMed E-utilities (esearch) — the basis for all article counts on this page.
3. NCT07146022 registration on ClinicalTrials.gov — VDPHL01, 552 participants, sponsored by Veradermics.
4. NCT06622824 registration on ClinicalTrials.gov — pyrilutamide (KX-826), 756 participants, sponsored by Kintor Pharmaceutical.
5. NCT05914805 registration on ClinicalTrials.gov — clascoterone, 762 participants, sponsored by Cassiopea.
6. NCT06539273 registration on ClinicalTrials.gov — the only phase 3 exosome trial in alopecia that the search returned, 30 participants.

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