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General News    H3'ed 4/27/10

Better Lashes Through Chemistry: New Mascara is a Drug

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It is not the users' imaginations. According to patient information, Lattise "may cause darkening of the eyelid skin which may be reversible [nee irreversible]... increased brown pigmentation of the colored part of the eye which is likely to be permanent"[and] hair growth to occur in other areas of your skin that LATTISE frequently touches."

Wait. There's more. "It is also possible for a difference in eyelash length, thickness, fullness, pigmentation, number of eyelash hairs, and/or direction of eyelash growth to occur between eyes," says the patient information. Elsewhere "periorbital fat atrophy"--a hollowed eye look from deepened upper eyelid sulci and reduced lower eyelid fullness that screams for a cosmetic fix itself--is attributed to Latisse. See you at the gala!

Lattise users also risk eye redness and irritation, inflammation called uveitis, macular edema, cataract, reduced intraocular pressure--the action that makes it a glaucoma drug--and vision problems. Contact lenses and the applicator can become contaminated and prostaglandin analogs can reactivate herpes simplex keratitis.

But it's Lattise's iridial pigmentation--darkening of the iris -- that is the most ominous side effect: like long term lash stimulation itself, the long term effects of iridial pigmentation "are not known" says the prescribing information. ("Until we discover them on you," they might have added.)

A 2001 study in Current Opinion in Ophthalmology says some patients with the condition "have an apparent thickening of the anterior border zone," and a 2001 paper in Investigative Opthalmology & Visual Science says "the end point of the increase in iridial pigmentation in affected patients is not known." Not too comforting when the pigment granules which are altered are known to be involved in the routing of optic nerves, protection from oxidative stress and protein degradation!

Using New York-based Grey Advertising and Chandler Chicco Agency for advertising and public relations, Allergan made $79 million from Lattise the first year. It has "refreshed" its spokesperson image and replaced Shields with blond actress Claire Danes and predicts $140 million in 2010.

But there are also questions. If Allergan didn't know about the lash stimulating side effect until it was discovered in its glaucoma drug trials--hello?--and still doesn't know what causes it, what else doesn't Allergan know about the drug? After all the bisphosphonate bone drugs caused bone growth too--until they caused fractures and jaw bone death after people used them a while. And ten years ago, Vioxx, Baycol, Avandia and Plavix were the top selling drugs. Are Lattise users guinea pigs?

What will be the effects of discontinuing Lattise over time, a factor not commonly observed in glaucoma patients and disregarded to speed Lattise to market?

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Martha Rosenberg is an award-winning investigative public health reporter who covers the food, drug and gun industries. Her first book, Born With A Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks and Hacks Pimp The Public Health, is distributed by Random (more...)
 

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