A woman suffered organ failure after a chemical used in hair straighteners caused her kidney to shut down.
The woman, who was not named,
felt nauseous and suffered from vomiting, diarrhea, fever, and back pain just
after regularly using products with glyoxylic acid, according to Mail Online.
The report gathered that she
had no health problems before the treatments, but said she would also feel a
burning sensation on her scalp whenever the chemicals were applied.
Doctors warned that glyoxylic
acid and its derivatives like glycolic acid popular in 'Brazilian' and
'formaldehyde-free' hair straightening treatments, could seep through the skin
into the blood and travel to the internal organs.
Once there, they could form
crystals the doctors suggested which may stop the kidneys from functioning
correctly.
In the case, revealed in the
New England Journal of Medicine, the woman went for treatments three times at
the same salon in June 2020, April 2021, and July 2022.
On the same day after each
treatment, she was diagnosed with acute kidney injury, which is a sudden loss
of function in the kidneys when they stop filtering water and waste products
from the blood.
Hospital tests showed levels of
creatinine, a waste product in her blood surged to double their normal
measurements.
It was not clear how she was
treated, but this may have included intravenous fluids and dialysis or being
hooked up to a machine to filter the blood.
The woman, from Tunisia, had
used a cream that contained ten percent glyoxylic acid.
Doctors suggested glyoxylic
acid damaged the kidneys because within the organs it was broken down into
'elongated' crystals which formed stones and stopped the organs from
functioning properly.
Glyoxylic acid works by
temporarily altering the structure of hair, allowing hairdressers to change
frizzy hair to straight.
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