August 7, 2002

Drug battles Leukemia -- and gray hair?

A new leukemia drug has been found to have a startling side effect: It appears to restore color to gray hair in some people.

French cancer researchers reported their finding in a letter to the editor in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

The medical team was testing imatinib mesylate, which is produced as Gleevec by Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp. of East Hanover, New Jersey. It was approved in the United States last year for treatment of chronic myeloid leukemia, a rare form of blood cancer.

The French researchers gave the drug to 133 leukemia patients. Within two months, some patients with gray hair started regaining their original color. All said they had made no changes in their hair care.

Perhaps 10 percent of the gray patients got back some color, said cancer researcher Francois-Xavier Mahon of the University of Bordeaux.

He said the effect was especially surprising because the drug is thought to interfere with a gene that, when blocked, would make hair even more gray.

Gleevec is part of a new class of drugs that kill cancerous cells while leaving normal ones alone.

Gleevec capsules can have strong side effects, including liver and blood toxicity, so Mahon said it is hard to imagine the drug's use as a commercial coloring agent. Also, such a product probably would not sell if it worked in only one in 10 people.

Mahon would not speculate on the whether the biological mechanism of this side effect could be discovered and exploited in a safer drug.

Novartis spokeswoman Gloria Stone said the company has heard similar reports of Gleevec patients regaining their previous hair color. But she said the company is not studying the coloring effect.

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