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Objective: Several articles, most of them written by nondermatologists, have stressed that bald men have a higher risk for coronary artery disease than men who are not bald. This study was performed to evaluate the validity of such conclusions from a dermatologic point of view., Design: A review of the 24 articles in literature from 1954 to 1999 as provided by MEDLINE and a previous review., Results: Five articles contained simple comments; 1 was a review of the previous literature; and 3 dealt only with the lipid profile. The remaining 15 articles dealt with coronary artery disease and baldness, and 9 of these concluded that there is a relationship between the 2 conditions, especially in younger subjects with severe early-onset androgenetic alopecia., Conclusions: Baldness did not coincide with androgenetic alopecia in some of the articles examined, which makes it difficult to settle the issue. Subjects who develop baldness before their 30s may have a higher risk for coronary artery disease than other men, and they may be individuals with early-onset androgenetic alopecia who also present with particularly elevated dihydrotestosterone-testosterone ratios. The baldness theory should be included as a secondary hypothesis in large epidemiological studies of coronary artery disease. Such studies should include dermatologic expertise for accurate, cost-effective evaluation of baldness.

The authors assessed the relation between the extent and progression of baldness and coronary heart disease. Baldness was assessed twice, in 1956 and in 1962, in a cohort of 2,017 men from Framingham, Massachusetts. Extent of baldness was classified in terms of number of bald areas: no areas bald (n = 153), one area bald (n = 420), two areas bald (n = 587), and all areas bald (n = 857). Men who were assessed both times and who had two or fewer bald areas during the first evaluation were classified into one of three groups: "mild or no progression," "moderate progression," or "rapid progression." The cohort was followed for up to 30 years for new occurrences of coronary heart disease, coronary heart disease death, cardiovascular disease, and death due to any cause. The relations between the extent and progression of baldness and the aforementioned outcomes were assessed using a Cox proportional hazards model, adjusting for age and other known cardiovascular disease risk factors. Extent of baldness was not associated with any of the outcomes. However, the amount of progression of baldness was associated with coronary heart disease occurrence (relative risk (RR) = 2.4, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.3-4.4), coronary heart disease mortality (RR = 3.8, 95% CI 1.9-7.7), and all-cause mortality (RR = 2.4, 95% CI 1.5-3.8). Rapid hair loss may be a marker for coronary heart disease.

The present report focuses on the association between baldness pattern and coronary heart disease risk factors in 872 male factory workers from southern Italy participating in an epidemiological study. Participants were divided according to presence or absence of baldness and baldness pattern. Participants with fronto-occipital baldness (male-type baldness) (n = 280) characterized by hair loss centered over the vertex with an m-shaped frontal-temporal recession had, on the average, higher serum cholesterol and blood pressure compared to participants with no baldness (n = 321) and/or participants with just frontal baldness (n = 273). For serum cholesterol, a significant interaction was detected between age and fronto-occipital baldness (i.e. the association between fronto-occipital baldness and elevated levels of serum cholesterol became weaker with age). No interaction was detectable between age and fronto-occipital baldness for blood pressure. The results of this cross-sectional study indicate that male-type pattern of baldness is associated with elevated CHD risk profile, and that this relation between age and serum cholesterol differs in younger compared to older men.