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It's been blamed on lack of blood flow, tight hats and too much sex. But male hair loss is, for the most part, hereditary and the first DNA test to tell men their chances of going bald before the age of 40 has hit the market.

A fledgling California company has begun selling a $149 (U.S.) test that scans a gene men inherit from their mothers that's known to play a major role in male-pattern premature hair loss.

While some men look to follicly challenged grandfathers or read strands in the sink as signs of what lies ahead, the company says its genetic test can get to the root of the problem.

"A receding hairline doesn't tell you anything," said Andy Goren, CEO of HairDX. "When we say you're going to go bald - we mean you're not going to have hair, or much of it."

People might shy away from learning about future medical conditions they can do nothing about. But Mr. Goren argues that while there is no cure for baldness, there is value in learning if hair today could be gone tomorrow.

"If you're not at high risk of losing your hair, you don't need to spend the money taking drugs [to slow hair loss or promote growth]," he said.

The company says online orders have arrived from men from all over the world, Canada included, and the test stands as further proof that DNA, once the sole domain of scientists, has gone mass market. Dozens of companies are selling mail-order genetic tests to offer medical diagnoses by DNA, diet plans by DNA, and even dating by DNA, however suspect the science.

Tim Caulfield, director of the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta, where researchers study the pitches behind such "lifestyle" genetics tests and therapies, said the concern is that many don't split hairs between science and marketing.

"Given the proliferation of these tests," he said, "there is a potential that the marketing around even the most recreational use of testing will reinforce a deterministic view of the role of genes in our lives."

Mr. Goren is quick to acknowledge that "99.9 per cent of the hair-loss market" has been a knot of scams and schemes, prompting tress-distressed men to suction their scalps and literally stand on their heads to promote growth.

And that market is massive: Every other man starts losing his hair before he's 50, and an estimated 30 per cent start losing it before they're 30.

But Mr. Goren insists the test "is not some scam," but based on peer-reviewed science and endorsed by the American Hair Loss Association, a not-for-profit consumer advocacy group.

The test focuses on the androgen receptor gene. Androgens are a group of hormones, testosterone prime among them, that influence the development of male characteristics - from gonads to hair growth.

Androgen overproduction has long been tied to hair loss, which in turn, explains the long-storied links between baldness and libido.

The androgen receptor gene lies on the X chromosome and, while women have two X sex chromosomes, men carry only the one passed down from their mothers.

Several studies have found associations between baldness and variant forms of the androgen receptor gene, and the HairDX test scans 12 of them to compile a risk profile for its customers.

The company says 95 per cent of bald men have a high-risk variant form of the gene. As well, it says men who carry this variant form face a 60-per-cent risk of losing their hair before the age of 40.

For men at high risk, it might be worth taking an anti-androgen drug, such as finasteride, to slow hair loss or promote growth, said Mr. Goren, adding his firm has no ties to the companies who make such drugs.

Men likely to go completely bald might also want to delay hair-transplant surgery, he said, or they "could have these scars" on their heads after they lose all their hair.

Mr. Goren, 38, is not only a HairDX executive, he's also a client: He said he has been rapidly losing hair in the past few years and his test results suggest he stands to lose much more. But he said he plans to wait out the shedding before considering a hair transplant.

But while the company touts its ability to predict a high risk of baldness, the science around low risk is less certain. As the company website notes: "absence of the genetic variant lowers your risk ... but doesn't eliminate your risk."

Other experts caution that scientists are still scratching their heads over the tangled biology behind common baldness, which is thought to involve environmental factors and many genes, some of them paternally inherited.

"The genetics have not been worked out at all for common baldness," said George Cotsarelis, head of the hair and scalp clinic at the University of Pennsylvania.

He said it may be "reasonable for the company to say if you have these markers, your risk is high ... but I really doubt they could predict if you're not going to go bald."

Most taking the test are men in their 20s and 30s. But Mr. Goren said there have been some odd requests - one couple wanted to test their three-year-old son.

Hope stems from research

Scientists are turning to stem cells to seed new hair growth for those facing a life without follicles.

Most experts once believed people were born with all the hair follicles they would ever have, and over time, could only lose them. But researchers studying the role of stem cells in wound healing discovered last year that hair follicles can be regenerated.

George Cotsarelis, a dermatologist at the University of Pennsylvania, said it was a graduate student who noticed "hair growing in the middle of this wound" during mice experiments with stem cells. Some of the stem cells, Dr. Cotsarelis said, had switched into a primitive mode, producing new hair typically seen during fetal development.

Working with biotech startup Follica Inc., Dr. Cotsarelis is about to begin animal trials to test compounds that can coax stem cells to produce an abundance of hair follicles in the aftermath of a wound. The distant hope, he explained, is that a stem-cell treatment for humans would involve some surface wounding of the scalp followed by a topical therapy that could spur the stem cells that gather at an injury site to produce new hair on the otherwise sparse surface.

Andy Goren, CEO of HairDX, which offers men a DNA test to predict the risk of baldness, along with Peter Novak, a neurologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, is investigating whether stem cells taken from a patient could be induced to grow hair that could be transplanted.

Mr. Goren said "it's a possibility" that men taking their test to predict the risk of baldness could be asked to participate in clinical trials. Carolyn Abraham