A French woman’s dyeing job inadvertently became dangerous for her eyesight. In a new case report this week, the woman’s doctors described how she developed retinal detachment and vision loss soon after using hair dye containing certain chemicals. Thankfully, her eyesight returned to normal over time when she stopped using the product and she was able to safely continue coloring her hair using different ingredients.
Doctors at the Edouard Herriot Hospital and the LEO Ophthalmological Center in France reported an attention-grabbing medical case Thursday in the journal. JAMA Ophthalmology. According to this newspaper, the 61-year-old woman visited doctors for a few days to have poor vision in both eyes. Tests confirmed that her symptoms were caused by damage to her retina—the layers of cells at the back of the eye that capture light and convert it into the information needed for us and our brain to see.
The woman had no medical history that could explain this retinal damage, also known as retinopathy, and doctors failed to find other common causes in their tests, such as infection or cancer. But the woman said that shortly before her symptoms started, she had recently used a store-bought hair dye that contained the chemical para-phenylenediamine.
Paraphenylenediamine belongs to a group of chemicals known as aromatic amines. And as luck would have it, doctors were aware of some recent cases of middle-aged women suffering from retinopathy associated with the use of hair dye containing aromatic amines (abbreviated to RAHDAA). Given the timing of her eye problem, and the lack of any other clear explanation, they decided that the woman had created her own RAHDAA story.
RAHDAA is similar to another type of retinopathy linked to the use of anti-cancer drugs that inhibit the activity of MEK proteins. Both these drugs and aromatic amines can cause damage to the retina by interfering with a mechanism important to the survival and homeostasis of retinal pigment epithelial cells, the authors say. This condition appears to be rare, although people with head injuries while using hair dyes containing aromatic amines may be at higher risk, based on case reports (the woman in this case had no such injuries).
As for the woman, her story has a happy ending in the end. He immediately stopped using the dye, and within four months, his vision returned to normal, with no signs of retinal detachment. When examined four years later, the woman reported that she had switched to an amine-free hair dye and tests confirmed that her vision remained as good as before, although she appeared to have some changes in her, if not visible. retina caused by dye.
Although these conditions are “apparently rare,” the authors of the report said that some doctors should be aware of this condition and be willing to consider amine-containing dyes as a possible cause of the patient’s retinal problems, especially when the initial test fails to find anything else specific. the answer.
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