It turns out a French woman’s hair dye was unintentionally posing a risk to her eyesight. In a new case report published this week, her doctors describe how her retinal detachment and vision loss began shortly after she used a hair dye containing a certain chemical. Fortunately, her vision returned to normal over time once she stopped using the product, and she was able to continue safely dyeing her hair using a different ingredient.
Doctors at Edouard Herriot Hospital and LEO Eye Center in France Reported Featured medical stories in Thursday’s Journal JAMA OphthalmologyAccording to the newspaper, the 61-year-old woman went to see a doctor a few days after experiencing blurred vision in both eyes. Tests confirmed that her condition was due to damage to the retina, the layer of cells at the back of the eye that captures light and converts it into the information we and our brains need to process vision.
The woman had no medical history that could explain the retinal damage, also known as retinopathy, and tests showed that doctors had not found other common causes of retinopathy, such as infection or cancer, but she did say that just before her symptoms began, she had recently used an over-the-counter hair dye that contains a chemical called paraphenylenediamine.
Paraphenylenediamine belongs to a group of chemicals called aromatic amines. And fortunately, doctors were aware of another recent case of a middle-aged woman who had experienced retinopathy associated with the use of hair dyes that contained aromatic amines, or RAHDAA for short. Given the timing of her eye troubles and the lack of any other clear explanation, doctors determined that the woman had developed RAHDAA.
RAHDAA is similar to another retinopathy associated with the use of anti-cancer drugs that inhibit the activity of the MEK protein. Both these drugs and aromatic amines may cause retinal damage by disrupting pathways important for the survival and homeostasis of retinal pigment epithelial cells, the authors say. The condition appears to be rare, but case reports suggest that people with scalp trauma from using hair dyes containing aromatic amines may be at higher risk (though the woman in this case did not have such trauma).
This woman’s case ultimately had a happy ending: she quickly stopped using the dye, and within four months her vision had returned to normal with no signs of retinal detachment. At a checkup four years later, the woman reported that she had switched to an amine-free hair dye, and tests confirmed that her vision was as good as ever, but the retinal changes caused by the dye appeared to still persist, albeit asymptomatically.
Although these cases are “probably rare,” the report authors say other doctors should be aware of the condition and consider amine-containing dyes as the cause of their patients’ retinal problems, especially if initial testing does not reveal any other clear answers.
