Obesity accelerates hair thinning in stem cell-centric converging mechanism

Obesity, a worldwide epidemic, predisposes to many ageing-associated diseases, yet its exact impact on organ dysfunction is largely unknown. Hair follicles, mini-epithelial organs that grow hair, miniaturize by ageing to cause hair loss through the depletion of hair follicle stem cells (HFSCs). Here, we report that obesity-induced stress such as by high-fat diet (HFD) feeding primarily targets HFSCs to accelerate hair thinning. Chronological gene expression analysis revealed that HFD feeding for four consecutive days directs activated HFSCs toward epidermal keratinization by generating excessive reactive oxygen species yet retains HFSC pools in young mice. Integrative analysis with stem cell fate tracing, epigenetic analysis and reverse genetics revealed that further feeding of HFD subsequently induces lipid droplets and NF-κB activation within HFSCs via autocrine/paracrine IL1R signaling. Those integrated factors converge on the profound inhibition of Sonic hedgehog (Shh) signal transduction in HFSCs, thereby further depleting lipid-laden HFSCs from the skin surface and inducing hair follicle miniaturization and eventual hair loss. Conversely, Shh activation by transgenes or compounds rescues HFD-induced hair loss. These data collectively demonstrate that stem cell inflammageing induced by obesity robustly represses organ regeneration signals to accelerate the mini-organ miniaturization, and indicates suggests the importance of daily prevention of organ dysfunction. Gene expression in hair follicle stem cells of young mice, aged mice and the mice fed with normal diet or high fat diet were measured.