Tuberculosis Drug and Hair Loss
Hello Dr Rassman.
I have a little problem with my hair. Lately my hair falls out a lot. When I take shower, and when I dry my hair, it falls out. It never happen like that before. My hair does fell out before but not that much. I taking a drug for tuberculosis prevention, it that might be the cause of loosing hair? I using herbalessen shampoo. Please let me know how to prevent hair falling? Should I talk hair vitamin? Please help me. Thank you
The most likely drug that you are taking for tuberculosis prevention is INH. The side effects of INH are numbness and tingling of hands and feet, blurry vision, headache, vomiting, fever, rash, and hepatitis. Are you taking vitamin B6 as well? INH tends to deplete vitamin B6. There is no hair loss associated with Vit B6 deficiency. I recommend that you take a multivitamin as well. You must realize that it is normal to lose up to 100 hairs per day. Are there any bald spots? Email your photo if you have some bald spots.
hi, i have also notice hairloss recently. which is 3 times more than usual. have not noticed any bald spots. am on tubercolousis medicine as well. rafinah and pyrazamide. is it because of the medicine?
im also taking INH for about 4 months now and my hair are falling out so badly. i never had this problem before i start using INH.
I have been taking Inh and my hair has been falling out. I had no idea the meds was the cause. I am so scared, I don’t know if I should stop this med or continue. Why arent people being warned about the drastic side effects of this med. :( Ladies anything you are doing to reverse this side effect. Is this permenant hair loss??
I have also been taking isoniazid for 6 months and noticed that my hair begun falling A LOT!! Then I got scared because I never experienced so much loss of hair before. So, I decided to look online if there is any correlation between isoniazid and hair loss and found some scientific research confirming that. It seems to be reversible. Anyway, I begun to take some pills for hair loss in order to help it recover. Hope it works soon!
Here are some of the research I found on this subject so that you can read:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3099514/
https://www.truedorin.com/pages/hair-loss-causes
https://dermatology.cdlib.org/DOJvol4num1/original/jankovi.html
Good luck!
I too had tremendous and horrifying experience with the drug. Seeing my hair fall out so badly for the first time was bad, like, really really bad.
I just finished with my course, I had lymph node TB and I too believe it’s because of the INH that I had so much of hairfall. Anybody whose hairfall stopped after their course got over? How much time did it take? Please, let me know. :x
I was on the isoniazid medication for a year after finding out I had latent TB. My hair growth is normally hard to see because I am African American and my hair is very thick and curly but I realized after looking in several pictures that my hair had not grown in a very long time. I’ve done research and have seen that the diagnosis and medication may have been the cause. I stopped taking the medication about 3 months ago and haven’t seen any improvement yet but recently I started taking a lot of vitamins to help the process along. Hopefully with time hair growth will return to normal.
I am under INH for 5 months. I have lost more than a half of my hair. I asked my doctor but he said it is not documented that INH coz hair loss. They just follow whatever is written in their guidlines but never ty to thing of the patient problem. They just give there view. what is not going to work. They could not rule out any other coz of my hairfall and I am 100 % sure that it is de to INH.
I am under INH for 5 months. I have lost more than a half of my hair. I asked my doctor but he said it is not documented that INH coz hair loss. They just follow whatever is written in their guidlines but never ty to thing of the patient problem. They just give there view. what is not going to work. They could not rule out any other coz of my hairfall and I am 100 % sure that it is de to INH. I wrote about this back in 2005 here: https://baldingblog.com/2005/12/09/tuberculosis-drug-and-hair-loss/
As you know, Tuberculosis is a bacterial infection and any chronic infection which switches your nitrogen balance into the negative range could cause hair loss. Are you taking other drugs that may cause your hair loss?