TONY EASTLEY: Baldness has long been a curse for many men, but a group of Melbourne researchers have gone some way to helping solve the genetic puzzle of hair loss.

The researchers, from Melbourne's St Vincent's Hospital, have used DNA technology to isolate the gene which causes a rare disorder leaving cavities in the hair shafts.

Around 80 per cent of Australian men and 50 per cent of women suffer some degree of baldness by the age of 50.

But the researchers say this latest breakthrough could help to solve genetic baldness within 10 years.

Daniel Hoare reports.

DANIEL HOARE: Pili annulati is a rare, inherited condition which causes hair loss. But a team of researchers studying the condition at Melbourne's St Vincent's Hospital think it could provide the breakthrough needed for solving genetic baldness.

Using DNA technology, the researchers have isolated the chromosome which causes pili annulati.

Rod Sinclair, a professor of dermatology at St Vincent's, says it's a minor discovery in the very large jigsaw puzzle concerning genetic hair loss. But he says it's nevertheless an important breakthrough.

ROD SINCLAIR: What's unusual about this condition is that the hair growth switches on and off in this rhythmic cycle, so that the hairs that are produced have this spangled appearance. Now what's important from our point of view in terms of learning about the genetic basis of this is that it opens up a new area of research within studying hair growth.

DANIEL HOARE: Professor Sinclair says that tracking the evolution of hair loss in humans, as well as hair growth, goes back a long way. And he insists that for those who are already bald, there will come a time when they will be able to grow that hair back.

ROD SINCLAIR: Hair's something that's been a unique feature of mammals for 180-million years, and so it's something that, the growth of hair's preserved through evolution for 180-million years, and along with that is an incredibly complex system to regulate its growth, to regulate its distribution on the body, to regulate hair length on different parts of the body, and similarly it's when these factors go wrong that people start to lose hair and go bald.

DANIEL HOARE: Is there any possibility for those out there who've already lost their hair that they may be able to get it back, or is this something that would require switching off a gene before it actually occurs?

ROD SINCLAIR: Well we know that it can go both ways, because you've only got to look at the chin of a 10-year-old boy and you can see how hair can be induced to grow on the beard from nothing.

And so what we're seeing in baldness is in some ways the reverse of that, where the hair that was there miniaturises and no longer grows, and so we know that there must be ways to turn this on, turn this off, to modulate the hair growth. And when you can do that, then you'll be able to treat and reverse baldness.

TONY EASTLEY: Rod Sinclair a professor in dermatology from Melbourne's St Vincent's Hospital.