8 Types of Drugs That Could Cause Hair Loss

The affected person was depressed. She had kidney disease, endured common dialysis and had undergone an aggressive medical routine after docs found blood clots. However that wasn’t what was dimming the 49-year-old’s spirits.

“My hair is falling out,” she lamented.

Her docs suspected the trigger. She had been prescribed warfarin, an anticoagulation drug, to cope with her clotting problem. Inside three weeks of switching to an alternate drug, apixaban, her hair stopped falling out — and ultimately it grew again.

Like turning grey, hair loss generally is a pure a part of ageing. However alopecia, the medical time period for hair loss, is a fancy situation with many variations, from slow-progressing balding (known as male- or female-pattern hair loss) to extra fast and patchy loss (alopecia areata is a standard kind). Genetics, hormonal adjustments, irritation and even sure illnesses — together with, in some instances, COVID-19 — can set off momentary or everlasting hair loss. And prescribed drugs may additionally set off extreme and sudden shedding.

The key lifetime of your hair

Every hair in your head has its personal particular person life cycle: A strand grows between two and eight years. Then, in a interval of two or three weeks, it stops rising and rests for 3 to 4 months earlier than detaching from the follicle. Your head of hair is a combination of 85 to 90 % actively rising hair and hair that’s resting and ready to shed.

However when the physique experiences a trauma, sudden, substantial shedding can happen. Triggers can embrace an acute sickness, stress, a extreme dietary deficiency, fast weight reduction — or a drug that proves poisonous to hair follicles. Medicine may be the perpetrator for a situation generally known as drug-induced telogen effluvium, which ends up in elevated shedding on prime of the scalp a couple of months after publicity.

Hair loss is a comparatively uncommon aspect impact, however a wide range of medicines might trigger it: beta-blockers, blood thinners, antidepressants, cholesterol-lowering medicine, sure nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medicine (NSAIDs) and hormone-related medicine like thyroid meds, hormone replacement therapies or steroids.