mino & steroids & hair loss, oh my!

[mj47]

no real questions here, just some info that may or may not help others.  plus, i love knowing how everyone else is doing, so i feel like i should contribute our experiences as well.
so, as soon as my husband seemed to get his pain & swellling somewhat under control with minocycline he weaned off of prednisone.  he managed fairly well except that his psoriasis flared terribly especially on his scalp.  he eventually went to a dermatologist who prescribed a topical steroid called clobex (both a shampoo & a spray for the body).  apparently it's very strong.  at the same time as my hubby started using this steroid, he upped his mino to 100mg every day.  within 3 days he started noticing significant hair loss.  he quit the steroid because we found out it had a rare side effect of hairloss & the company itself told his father (a dr.) that if the hair loss began around 3 days after initiation of treatment then it could potentially be entering his body systemically & causing some shift in him that could cause the hairloss.  in their study of 1400 patients they had 4 patients that reported hair loss.
then…we found out that minocycline has a rare side effect of hair loss as well.  hmm…:shock:  of course as soon as hubby heard that, he dropped his dose of mino to see if he noticed any difference.  the only difference he noticed was an increase in pain until he decided to go back to his regular dosing of 100 every day.  seems like he's just starting to get his pain back under control, although not before  his ankle swelled & he developed major back pain.  but, the hair is still coming out albeit much less so than while he was using the steroid.

we wanted to hear dr. s from ida grove's take on this & wrote an email to him.
i was so thrilled to receive a response from him.  honestly, i was nearly starstruck. :blush:
he was very sweet & said that “In my experience with using minocycline on thousands of patients I have never seen or heard of hair loss with it.  However, it could happen.”  then he recommended that my husband give himself a break from mino for 3-4 mos & see if the hair situation resolved…in the meantime he told him to take an equivalent dose of doxycycline.
we're still not sure what we'll do because my husband is still dealing with pains from cutting his dosage then increasing it, thus creating some herxing as well.  the thought of messing with his antibiotic is not one he's ready to entertain just yet.
also, i think my husband was a little relieved to hear that in dr. s's experiences with thousands of patients he'd never seen it happen.  4 out of 1400 (clinical study) or none out of over 2000?  hmm….

well, that's about it.  😀
~mj

[APbeliever]

Minocycline has a side effect of hair loss. I am one of those unfortunate ones too that had a terrible side effect with Minocycline which includes hair loss as well as fatty liver problems(although according to doctors fatty liver is due to any other thing besides mino). I showed to the same doctors that said fatty liver is not caused by Minocycline something from their own medical journals in which four year old kids had fatty livers developed right after taking tetra drugs(Mino is a tetra family drug). Hair loss is another issue. I had more hair when I was using Methotrexate which is a known hair loss causing medication. However, I never had any hair loss on the top of my head when I was using Methotrexate(amazingly I was just loosing body hair on it which my wife really hated anyways). With Mino, however, my hair on top started getting real thin and I had some bald spots showing up here and there and I was always thick haired before. I was shocked cause no one believed me at the time. But it does happen and there are plenty of other cases too. I am just on 100mgs of Mino three times a week and using Rogaine extras-strength every where on my head (not just the vertex as suggested on rogaine pamphlet). Ask your husband to use it also with a doctors permission, of course.

[Author]

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