Doctors know how to suppress the immune system to prevent it from rejecting transplanted organs such as hearts and kidneys. Could these immuno-suppressive drugs be used in hair loss treatments to prevent the immune system from rejecting the hair as foreign?

Yes, in theory, say dermatologists, but in practice they doubt the advisability of prescribing them to be taken by mouth, as any interference with the immune system might lower resistance to infection. The patient could become very ill. One of this drug group, azathioprine, is occasionally given orally when other hair loss remedies have failed but it needs to be carefully monitored.

To play safe and cut out risks, one of the immuno-suppressive drugs, cyclosporine, is currently being tried in a 10 per cent gel, to be used topically, i.e. applied to the scalp. The trial of these treatments for hair loss in women is in the early stages, but so far there have been no side-effects on blood pressure or kidneys.

A recent hope has been the discovery that minoxidil, a drug used to treat high blood pressure, could be used in effective hair growth products in people with patchy - mild - alopecia.

And hope for those who have had severe hair loss for many years seems to lie with the sensitizer diphencyprone, which has actually triggered hair growth in a patient who had been completely bald for 54 years!

The majority of patients, however, receive little medical help and are consequently turning to natural hair loss remedies. You may see your doctor. If the case is severe, he may refer you to a consultant dermatologist. But patients are often disappointed. They have received this kind of advice from specialists:

Don't think about yourself so much!'
It might grow. It might not.'
To a young wife of 32, who had lost all her hair, including eyebrows and eyelashes: 'You can get some very pretty hats these days!'

Hard enough to take when you are grown up, but worse for a child.

Peppi, 13, slashed her arms with a knife in the playground of her comprehensive school. Her scalp hair had nearly all fallen out and other children were playing games trying to knock her wig off.

Joanne, aged 9, refused to wear party dresses after she lost all her hair two years ago. 'She suddenly refused to wear anything but shorts and T-shirts,' says her mother. 'She changed from a pretty little girl who loved parties and frills and black patent shoes, to a tomboy.'

The parents of Laura, aged 13, were stunned by the behavior of a consultant. Says her father: Tie glanced cursorily at her head and remarked "You're going to have to wear a wig, aren't you?"' Her mother, herself a hospital worker, was equally upset. We were given no medication, hair loss treatment or advice as to how a formerly attractive girl of 13 should be helped to cope with baldness. Laura has twice been suicidal.'

It is perhaps understandable that alopecia areata treatment apparently merits such low priority in hospitals. After all, it neither cripples nor kills. Dermatology is a tiny specialty with fewer than 250 consultants in the UK and 6,000 in the USA. The bad news is that many of them send their patients home with little positive help. Indeed, they often adopt a deliberate policy of inactivity, on the grounds that it is pointless to use uncomfortable, perhaps expensive hair loss treatments which may not work.

The good news is that a small group of dedicated dermatologists is seriously involved in research and treatment for hair loss in women. They try very hard to help the patient through the trauma of hair loss.

Dr Andrew Messenger, consultant dermatologist at Sheffield's Royal Hallamshire Hospital, says: 'I see my role here as more than merely to administer a hair loss treatment. I am here - I hope - to talk with the patient and try to help her through. I try to make time to do this. The dilemma with so many of the treatments we have available is the fact that we have a condition which is in no way physically harmful. But we could cause physical damage with hair loss treatments in a case where the original problem is merely cosmetic'

Some hair loss remedies carry a risk. There can be side-effects, such as weight gain, with long-term systemic steroids. Some sensitizers have been found to be mutagenic, i.e. they can change the structure of cells.

Says Dr Messenger: It is depressing to treat alopecia. I find it sad that there is so little I can do. I feel sorry for the single people who lose their hair at a time when their looks are crucial - when they are just beginning to make relationships.' The sociological and psychological effects of alopecia are often very serious. Marriages break up; careers are ruined.