Ultrastructure of human scalp hair shafts as revealed by freeze-substitution fixation.

Human scalp hair is important as a diagnostic clue to many diseases, in medical jurisprudential investigations, and also as a subject of cosmetic treatments. While many ultrastructural studies of the human hair root including the hair follicle have been reported, few studies have been done on the human hair shaft. We report here the ultrastructure of human scalp hair shafts prepared by a rapid-freezing technique followed by freeze-substitution fixation that allows the observation of fine cell structures. Healthy scalp hair shafts from Japanese females 12-13 years of age were rapid-frozen and then freeze-substituted in OsO4-acetone. In addition, this technique was applied to the study of some changes of the hair shafts (i.e., hair damaged by thioglycolic acid cold permanent waving and white hair). By this method, the hair shaft was rapid-frozen throughout without appreciable ice damage although the hair shaft was nearly 100 microm in diameter. The rapid-freezing technique resulted in excellent preservation of the ultrastructure of the hair shafts: lamellar structures in the cuticle and fine fibrous ultrastructures in the cortex were observed without chemical treatments. Thioglycolic acid treatment affected the ultrastructure of both the cuticle and the cortex. Except for the absence of melanin granules, no significant differences in the ultrastructure were observed between white hair and black hair. The rapid-freezing technique followed by freeze-substitution fixation appears to be the most reliable approach for the morphological evaluation of fully keratinized cells and tissues.