RESEARCH ARTICLE Quantitative mapping of human hair greying and reversal in relation to life stress Ayelet M Rosenberg1, Shannon Rausser1, Junting Ren2, Eugene V Mosharov3,4, Gabriel Sturm1, R Todd Ogden2, Purvi Patel5, Rajesh Kumar Soni5, Clay Lacefield4, Desmond J Tobin6, Ralf Paus7,8,9, Martin Picard1,4,10* 1Department of Psychiatry, Division of Behavioral Medicine, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, New York, United States; 2Department of Biostatistics, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, New York, United States; 3Department of Psychiatry, Division of Molecular Therapeutics, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, New York, United States; 4New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, United States; 5Proteomics and Macromolecular Crystallography Shared Resource, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, New York, United States; 6UCD Charles Institute of Dermatology & UCD Conway Institute, School of Medicine, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland; 7Dr. Phillip Frost Department of Dermatology & Cutaneous Surgery, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, United States; 8Centre for Dermatology Research, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom; 9Monasterium Laboratory, Mu¨ nster, Germany; 10Department of Neurology, H. Houston Merritt Center, Columbia Translational Neuroscience Initiative, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, New York, United States Abstract Background: Hair greying is a hallmark of aging generally believed to be irreversible and linked to *For correspondence:
[email protected] psychological stress. Methods: Here, we develop an approach to profile hair pigmentation patterns (HPPs) along Competing interests: The individual human hair shafts, producing quantifiable physical timescales of rapid greying transitions. authors declare that no Results: Using this method, we show white/grey hairs that naturally regain pigmentation across competing interests exist.