Are there some medications that actually cause hair loss?
“So why does my pill book say that antianxiety medications cause hair loss? The hairloss they mention is not alopecia, it is extra hair in your brush. Like when women are pregnant, sometimes they lose more hair than normal and sometimes their hair grows like crazy. It does not mean patches of hair fall out.” Among the industrial chemicals causing a reversible type of alopecia are potassium thiocyanate (used for hypertension), trimethadione (used for epilepsy), bismuth, and cyclic condensation poducts of monomeric chloroprene (during the manufacture of rubber). Chemotherapeutic agents are well known for the induction of diffuse hair loss (anagen arrest) while anticontraceptive drugs and anticoagulants may induce telogen effluvium (see section on differential diagnosis of baldness). The antithyroid medications carbimazole and thiouracil may also promote hair loss. There are in addition many anecdotal and often unsubstantiated accounts relating certain drugs to alopecia. Although the scal
