Greco Medical Publishes PRP Study Findings

Update: Based on a reader’s comment to this post regarding frequency of treatment, I contacted Dr. Greco and he said that he tries to get his hair transplant patients to get PRP injections once a year after the transplant. He uses a more purified version of PRP called CRP, and the details of that can be found on his website.


Greco Medical has been a long-time proponent of using platelet-rich plasma (PRP) during hair restoration procedures. In September 2014, The Journal of Dermatologic Surgery in the US published the largest ever PRP study related to hair. Dr. Joseph Greco was one of the four authors of this study.

I am impressed by some of the detailed content on there and they had both male (42) and female (22) participants. It does seem a bit limiting in that only “two independent evaluators” decided on the success or failure of the end results. The two before and after photos in there (female on page 1015, and male on page 1016) are impressive and in all likelihood among the best-case results.

According to the two evaluators, the overall proportion of patients seeing a clinically significant improvement at 6 months post PRP treatment was 40.6% and 54.7%, respectively.

As with low-level laser therapy (LLLT), I have also always been very skeptical about PRP. My skepticism for both has subsided in the past year or two as more supportive studies have come out and as more surgeons have started offering both LLLT and PRP. However, I am still not convinced that either of these technologies offers more than a limited improvement in hair quality and thickness for the average person.

It also does not help when most of these study authors include hair transplant surgeons who are already big proponents of PRP and/or LLLT in their practices. It would be far more believable if researchers, universities and companies that are entirely financially disassociated with PRP published such studies.

6 thoughts on “Greco Medical Publishes PRP Study Findings”

  1. Good evening, Admin,

    It’s quite impressive but I read about 2 years ago that injections of PRP must be done on a regular basis throughout life.

    Many thanks for sharing this. Very best regards.

  2. Interesting William and makes sense.

    I wonder how many people just have PRP injections during hair transplants, and how many have/will have them on a regular basis (every two years?) without getting any hair transplants. It seems like most online examples at the moment are one time injections during hair transplant procedures.

  3. I recently visited a hair restoration clinic and asked about receiving the PRP as a standalone treatment to help slow down hair loss. Even though they do offer it, they didn’t seem to think much of it. They basically said that they believed that laser therapy gives better results than PRP and said that PRP should be probably my last resort

  4. Hola alguien probó en aumentar la dosis de finasteride??? algunos medicos en últimas instancia aumentan a 2 mg por día antes que recurrir al dutasteride.

  5. The Italian pilot observational study taught me a lot about cell- and biologic-based therapy, but raise many questions as well. There were twice as many men than women. Sub-group analysis comparing differences by gender would have been interesting. They didn’t distinguish between those who were never on minoxidil/fenastaride and those on at least on of these for 2 years who continued such therapies during the trial. What other growth factors were significantly represented in the plasma fibrin matrix? Having a mixture of PRP, fibrin matrix, and leukocytes (white blood cells: WBCs) makes it difficult to know which of these made significant contributions to the outcomes. WBCs may be a mixture of anti- and pro-inflammatory T-cells. I would be more comfortable with 5 independent observers who are not authors of the trial to avoid bias, especially since both rated some improvement in essentially 100% of subjects; I do applaud the 4+ minimum cut-off for any clinically significant change. Regression to the mean in the 10% with severe or very severe subjects may be unlikely, but a bias towards scoring greater improvements in more severe subjects is possible (possible observer bias towards more dramatic differences); I would be cautious about interpreting the results as suggesting that the more severe subjects may derive the best benefit. As they suggest, a prospective randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of larger and more homogeneous group(s) would allow for more robust conclusions. Regardless, I applaud this pilot study–it’s a start, and we need as many effective options as possible. Got to find a way to avoid injections. 20% of all people are needle-phobic (a phobia as genuine as fear of heights) and can’t do any injection therapies.

  6. It’s already possible to avoid needles with injection protocols. Look up “needless injection”. There are some great technologies out there now using compressed air (medjet comes to mind). However, even things like electrophoresis and/or sonic pulsing already are great transdermal solutions for larger proteins and molecules.

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