Cure for Some Baldness Stumbled Upon?

The baldness business is booming, with Americans spending $3.5 billion a year trying to stop and even reverse hair loss. And, reports CBS News correspondent Seth Doane, while you may think you've heard this before, there may well be a cure now for at least some of the follically-challenged among us.

And it wasn't even what the researchers who made the hair-raising discovery were looking for.

Researchers at UCLA who'd set out to study ways to prevent stress-related-stomach problems in genetically-altered bald mice found something else entirely -- hair.

"It was a very big surprise to us and we were all very excited," head researcher and professor of medicine Yvette Tache told CBS News

She says they injected hairless mice with five doses of a stress-blocking compound. Three months later, when they checked on their once-bald mice, they were shocked to see every hairless mouse had grown a full head and back of hair.

"This may be very important for (people who are) losing hair and stressed," Tache says.

So have researchers found the fountain of youth for balding men? Not quite.

In the end, Doane points out, the findings may only help people who are losing their hair due to stress -- not the most common cause of baldness -- genetics. But for many men living with a shiny scalp, hope may be growing.