Glaucoma drug offers new way to grow eyelashes

From CTV News:
Women who long for lush lashes have had to rely on messy mascara and fussy false lashes. Now, doctors have stumbled on a new treatment from an unexpected source: a glaucoma drug.

The drug is called Lumigan. For glaucoma patients, the medication reduces pressure inside the eye. But it also appears to make lashes thicker by increasing the growth cycle of hair follicles and slowing down how fast they fall out.

The drug seems to offer this unexpected side effect because it's made with prostaglandins, hormone-like substances that flourish during a woman's pregnancy and can make her hair thicker.

Now, Vancouver husband wife team Drs. Jean & Alastair Carruthers, an ophthalmologist and a dermatologist, are studying the medication. They say that in their tests, they found that people grew lashes that were about 50 per cent longer and twice as thick. The lashes were also 18 per cent darker - all of this without the need for mascara. ...more