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Excerpts from:  CAPSULES: Researcher links smoking and hair loss in men

By Dianne Partie Lange Los Angeles Times [04/21/03]
 
The same destructive effects that smoking has on skin, causing premature aging among other visible changes, also may contribute to baldness.

Wound-healing experiments have shown that the smallest blood vessels that supply the scalp are constricted by both acute and long-term smoking, reports Dr. Ralph M. Trueb, a dermatologist at the University Hospital of Zurich, in an editorial in the April issue of Dermatology. Researchers also have detected nicotine and cotinine, a toxic byproduct in smoke, in smokers' hair. Studies have shown that when these substances are processed by cells in the hair follicle, mutations occur in the cell's DNA.