
Babies display “Werewolf syndrome” after getting anti-baldness drug by mistake - bookofjoe
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/29/world/europe/spain-werewolf-syndrome-children.html
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lxe
Wow, I wasn't aware that Minoxidil (Rogaine) works THIS well. Though it was
all marketing gimmicks!

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chaoticmass
So when balding men take it, do they get hairier everywhere (sans face) or
just their head? I'd rather go bald than end up with a shad rug on my chest
and back and arms, etc.

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jefft255
I use rogaine daily, you apply it on your scalp and it’s a foam. You need to
wash your hand well because you can get hairier on your hand. As for the rest
of the body I am extremely hairy already and I couldn’t possible notice a
difference.

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dmix
> The laboratory was eventually shut down and the medicine taken off the
> market. Officials have opened an investigation.

Why would they need to take it off the market if it was just a mislabeling
issue? Unless they mean that particular lab's medication was taken off the
market.

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kgwgk
> Unless they mean that particular lab's medication was taken off the market.

That’s obviously what happened. They had prepared the wrong product. It was
not just sending a product to the wrong place, they had created something that
no one had ever asked for.

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bediger4000
Somebody else please tell me they thought this was a great superhero "origin
story".

I don't think it was in the article: doesn't Spain have an FDA-equivalent?
What root cause could this be ascribed to?

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randyrand
Imagine being a child and having this picture of you slewn across the web like
this.

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jdavis703
This article was light on details. I'm also not familiar with how compounding
pharmacies work in Spain. But do prescription drugs come with a label
describing properties such as shape, color and imprints? If they do, did the
lab manage to mess that part up too?

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refurb
This a compounding pharmacy. They are creating the final product. Likely they
just bought bulk minoxidil powder.

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mikeyouse
For further info - they were likely compounding it into a liquid for
infants/children (it's very difficult to get them to swallow pills) and
compounded liquids have a much shorter shelf life than pills or prepackaged
liquids, so we rely on distributed compounding pharmacies near customers. This
has the obvious problem of guaranteeing quality and consistency across
thousands of small operations.

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pkaye
> had erroneously distributed to pharmacists minoxidil, a drug that helps
> fight baldness, that was labeled omeprazole, a drug that treats acid reflux.

Are compounding pharmacies common in Spain? Isn't omerpazole just an OTC
medicine that comes prepackaged?

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dhosek
It seems that the medications were being distributed in liquid form. Also,
while it's OTC in the US (at least in pill form), a quick google search
revealed that "a prescription may be required"

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pkaye
Okay maybe the liquid form is why they need the compounding pharmacy. Maybe
its not readily available as a liquid.

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turbulents
I bet if this happened in the US, the doctors would have prescribed something
else to counteract the hypertrichosis.

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pvaldes
Stop taking the product would be enough

