The study showed that between the appearance of gray hair and the immune response of the body to some infectious agents there is a link.

All people are different, but the color of hair? universal indicator that allows you to determine the approximate age of a person. When the melanocytes (the cells responsible for the production of the pigment) begin to weaken, the hair first becomes gray. Then they get a white color.

In addition to the natural aging process, gray hair can develop due to severe stress.

Researchers from the American National Institutes of Health (NIH), in collaboration with the University of Alabama (UAB), discovered an interesting genetic relationship between hair color and the immune system, in particular those immune cells that report infections in the body.

How protection is activated.

When the body gets viruses and bacteria, the immune system is activated. All cells of the body have the ability to recognize intruders from outside. At the moment of penetration of the pathogenic agent, signaling molecules are activated, so-called interferons. They are introduced into cells and prevent viral replication. These are effector cells of the immune system that protect the body.

The relationship between the activation of the immune system and the pigmentation of hair seemed at first to the researchers an amazing. "Now we have at our disposal methods of genetic analysis, through which we observe what happens at the genetic level, and sometimes there are processes that we do not expect at all,"? says Melissa Goering from the Department of Biology at the University of Alabama.

Originally, she said, scientists were interested in genes that play a role in the regulation of stem cells. The fact that the presence of gray hair was also included in the study is explained simply: the loss of stem cell function for melanocytes is easily fixed. When they stop functioning, producing less or almost no pigment, it becomes quickly noticeable.

Regulation on several levels.

In their study, scientists found a link between the appearance of gray hair, the immune system and the transcription factor MITF. MITF stands for the transcription factor associated with the microphthalmos and is responsible for coloring the hair in vertebrates. In particular, it has a regulatory function in melanocytes, including maintaining the response of interferon. When MITF loses control of this interferon response in melanocyte stem cells, the hair becomes gray.

"This discovery suggests that the genes responsible for the pigmentation of hair and skin also have a function of control in the immune system,"? says co-author William Pavan of NIH.

On the one hand, does this clarify the mechanism of hair graying, on the other hand? demonstrates the connection with the immune system and helps to better understand the mechanism of development of pigmentary disorders, such as vitiligo.

Proceeding from the received data, there is one more question: in what degree the immune system influences, if hair begin to turn gray at an early age? This issue is now being studied by scientists in a study on mice.

yellmed. en.

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