Male Pattern Baldness and Its Association with Coronary Heart Disease: A Meta-Analysis

January 2013 in “ BMJ Open ”

Tomohide Yamada, Kazuo Hara, Hitomi Umematsu, Tomoko Kadowaki

male pattern baldness vertex baldness frontal baldness coronary heart disease CHD systemic atherosclerosis heart disease atherosclerosis

Studysummary This meta-analysis reports that vertex baldness is associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease, particularly in younger men, while no significant link was found for frontal baldness.

Our plain-language summary. Not medical advice or a treatment recommendation. Consult a qualified healthcare professional before changing treatment. Full disclaimer

The 2013 meta-analysis by Yamada et al. found that male pattern baldness, specifically severe vertex baldness, is significantly associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease (CHD), with a relative risk (RR) of 1.48 for severe cases. The study, which included 36,990 participants from six observational studies, showed that this association was particularly strong in younger men under the age of 55 or 60. Frontal baldness, however, was not significantly linked to CHD. The findings suggest that vertex baldness may be an indicator of systemic atherosclerosis and that the risk of CHD correlates with the severity of baldness. The authors recommend that men with vertex baldness should be assessed for cardiovascular risk factors, but also advise against over-medicalization due to the common nature of male pattern baldness. Further research is called for to confirm these results. No funding or competing interests were reported in the study.

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This study found a significant association between androgenetic alopecia and metabolic syndrome, highlighting high-density lipoprotein cholesterol as a particularly important factor.

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