Evaluation of DNA variants associated with androgenetic alopecia and their potential to predict male pattern baldness

PLoS One. 2015 May 22;10(5):e0127852. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0127852. eCollection 2015

A strong genetic predisposition to androgenetic alopecia (AGA) in men is an established fact. Several recent papers, some of them reviewed in this section of the EHRS website, report genes linked to male AGA at a young age. In this study, Marcińska et al. drew on the latest knowledge to build a model for predicting male AGA. Two prediction models (the first based on 5 SNPs, single nucleotide polymorphisms, the second on 20 SNPs) were tested on 305 samples. The strongest association with male AGA was found for SNPs near AR/EDA2R and in the 20p11 region, confirming earlier results. Although not ideal, the combination of 20 SNPs predicted AGA well, with a model sensitivity of 87.1%. However, the specificity of the test was low (42.4%). Further research is certainly needed to make such tests more accurate, but this study shows that a prediction model of this kind may be used to predict male AGA in the future.