Have any females taking HCTZ for high blood pressure experienced hair loss?
If this happened to you, you’re not crazy. I looked at the literature and alopecia has happened in <1% of patients that took HCTZ while the drug was undergoing clinical trials. It is a very rare side effect (I've never seen it in all the patients I've dispensed it to), but it did show up during clinical trials. There are other diuretics that you could ask your doctor about. Chlorthalidone is in the same class of diuretics as HCTZ. Alopecia did not happen during clinical studies done on chlorthalidone. Although there are other classes of diuretics, they do not have as good evidence as the class that HCTZ and chlorthalidone do.
