Hair-straightening cream might leave your kidneys in a hairy situation

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2024-03-21 08:00

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French researchers following up the curly case of a Tunisian woman becoming sick after having her hair straightened, has found that the glyoxylic acid in many of the products can be absorbed and travel to our kidneys, potentially causing harm, in a study using mice. The 26-year-old woman went in for three hair-straightening treatments over three years, and came away from each with vomiting, diarrhoea, fever and back pain, all caused by acute kidney damage. Following this, the researchers applied hair-straightening cream to mice and scanned their blood and kidneys. They found kidney stones to have formed in the mice, which had not appeared in mice they had not applied the cream to.