Two cases of kidney failure following hair straightening

A 17-year-old girl was hospitalized last Thursday with severe kidney failure, a few days after having her hair straightened. She was referred to the children’s emergency department of the Shaare Zedek Medical Center after suffering from vomiting, dizziness and severe headaches, and in the tests it was found that there was a sharp and significant damage to the kidney function. This is the second case in about a month when a 25-year-old woman was hospitalized due to severe kidney failure after she also underwent hair straightening.

“Already during skating, she began to feel tingling and strong pains in her scalp, it really burned her. She called me crying and stopped skating in the middle, says the girl’s mother. In the days after that, she started vomiting non-stop, suffered from severe headaches, backaches and feeling cold, and also developed a scalp infection on one side of her head. We did a medical checkup in the community, but it did not improve, and then in blood tests we were told that she had Kidney failure. We rushed to the hospital.”

According to Dr. Jenny Goichberg, a senior physician at the Children’s Nephrology Institute in Shaare Zedek, this is an acute and significant kidney failure, which was discovered in the laboratory tests and required hospitalization, monitoring and medical treatment. According to her, her medical condition required close monitoring from the moment she arrived at the hospital.

The girl was admitted to the children’s ward, where she underwent a series of comprehensive tests, monitoring and fluid treatment. After several days of hospitalization, her condition stabilized, and yesterday she was released to her home with instructions for continued medical follow-up.

The case joins a series of incidents that have been investigated in recent years in Israel. A study initiated by doctors from Shaare Zedek, which lasted three years and was published in the American Journal of Kidney Diseases, described 26 women between the ages of 14 and 58 who came to emergency rooms across the country with severe kidney failure – all of them after straightening their hair. Following the findings, and an investigation that indicated a connection to glyoxylic acid – a component found in some of the lubricants – the Ministry of Health decided to revoke licenses from dozens of lotions containing the substance.

The doctors warn that some of the lubricants contain chemical substances with high acidity, which may be absorbed through the skin of the scalp and lead to acute kidney damage. Prof. Linda Shavit, Director of the Institute of Nephrology at Shaare Zedek Medical Center, explains that substances containing glyoxylic acid may be absorbed into the blood and lead to deposition of the substance in the kidneys. According to her, in recent years it is known about more than 40 women who suffered from kidney failure after straightening their hair, three of them needed dialysis. “You have to be careful not to put hair straightening products directly on the scalp or the roots, but keep a distance of at least 1.5 cm from them. In addition, both hairdressers and customers should be careful not to heat the material and only act according to the manufacturer’s instructions,” says Prof. Shavit.