Xeljanz Might Grow Your Hair But At A Deadly Cost
The pharmaceutical giant Pfizer must be rubbing its hands in anticipation… because if it gets its way the super risky, super expensive arthritis drug Xeljanz could become one of the company’s hottest sellers. And not because it can “cure” arthritis, or any other disease, for that matter.
Hair to die for
In the past we’ve told you about the off label use of risky drugs. When a drug is prescribed off label, it means that medical authorities did not approve the drug to be prescribed for the condition that it is given… but it’s ‘allowed’ to be touted behind closed doors. It’s a dangerous practice to say the least.
Most often doctors find out about these other uses from their drug reps, but in a hush, hush, wink and nod kind of way, which is frowned upon (in a big way) by medical authorities.
Enter the arthritis drug Xeljanz. This rheumatoid arthritis drug already has a black box warning. It’s one of those new biologic drugs and it’s a horror story – complete with warnings about serious infections that can cause death, tuberculosis and “other opportunistic infections.” The label also warns about lymphomas and other cancers that have been reported in people taking
the drug.
So, you can imagine that many patients suffering from rheumatoid arthritis are reluctant to use it.
The reason for the excitement around ‘Xeljanz’ is that it can cause hair growth. A news report recently announced that researchers may have uncovered the answer to one of the biggest “mysteries” in life – baldness. “Thanks to a little arthritis pill,” a bald man now has a full head of hair… and the report ended with photos of a beautiful, shiny head of hair – all from that “little arthritis pill.”
Of course, the report won’t tell you how deadly this little pill can be. In fact, when you listen to this magical story of shiny hair and disappearing baldness, it’s like the side effects magically disappeared with the hair loss.
A “cure” for baldness is a gold brick if there ever was one… and a dermatologist from Yale University saw a big opportunity to grab headlines with this hair elixir discovery.
He was asked to see a patient who had psoriasis. The man also had Alopecia Universalis – a medical condition where you lose all of your hair, including eyebrows and eyelashes.
He treated the patient with Xeljanz for his psoriasis, but it didn’t work very well. But it did seem to cause the man to grow hair.
By the end of 8 months, the 25-year-old patient had a full head of hair. And he’s still taking this dangerous drug every single day to keep it.
The man’s condition, alopecia, is thought to be a type of autoimmune disease in which your immune system attacks your hair follicles. It’s thought that Xeljanz reversed the condition.
The dermatologist from Yale is already theorising that Xeljanz might be used for the more common cause of hair loss, male pattern baldness.
While claiming he didn’t want to “promote” Xeljanz for male pattern baldness, he still liked to “imagine” that this drug “might work” as the hair restorer so many people are looking for. He called it an “enormous step forward” for treating hair loss.
But it’s more like a gigantic leap – the cause of baldness and the cause of alopecia are not even in the same ballpark. I don’t think anyone would call the idea of trading even the thickest and fullest head of hair for the very real possibilities of dying from an infection, cancer or tuberculosis a “step forward” they would want to take.
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Sources:
“Can this arthritis drug cure baldness?” Erin Cunningham, June 20, 2014, The Daily Beast, thedailybeast.com
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I don’t want to use anything dangerous, but I have a serious hair-loss problem which a specialist tells me is stress related. Are there any good, natural “cures” out there for my problem, which is very distressing & embarrassing? Thank you!