Cooler head, more hair

To this day, the cancer patient is often iconically portrayed in popular culture as a weakened, balding person. Certainly, considerable progress has been made in oncology in recent years, and new drugs with new side-effect profiles are available, but the above account, it is known, still has a lot of truth: Although the cells of many types of cancer are generally in division phases more frequently than normal body cells due to their high rate of division, and thus react more strongly to cytostatic drugs – all other cells that naturally divide rapidly, such as cells of the mucosa or, indeed, the hair root, are just as affected. What can be done about it? A study in JAMA has answers.