Accutane And Infertility (Top voted first)

I took accutane almost 14 years ago as a teenager. I am now a 32 year old woman who has just been diagnosed with infertility that they believe is linked to autoimmune issues. I truly believe that accutane is the cause of this; from the research that I have done it seems that accutane has been linked to other thyroid-related diseases, but that they have not yet been able to prove a link between accutane and infertility. There are, however, actually more people like me out there than I originally thought. Being diagnosed with ovarian dysfunction has been a horrific, horrific blow. And while there was plenty of information about accutane and birth defects, no one ever mentioned a possibility of future infertility. I was a teenager! This is a tragedy and I believe something should be done about it. If you too have been affected diagnosed with infertility and have taken accutane, please email me. There are plenty of suits against accutance. If there are enough of us, we can come together to do the medical research and get the help we now need.

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I too took accutane in my early 20's and am now 35, went through about 5 years of infertility treatments with no specific problem and have been unable to have children still. My diagnosis is unspecified infertility. I believe accutane may be the cause of this.

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I took Accutane in my mid 20's...it worked OK, not completely, but my skin was better. However, now I am 42 and have been trying for years to get pregnant and cannot. I am heartbroken, as is my husband. It horrifies me to think that Accutane may have done this to us. At the time I was on it, the big warning was not to get pregnant while taking it, and that I had to have blood tests each month for liver and cholesterol changes, which they did know about. Nobody EVER said anything about possible infertility!

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I took accutane 10 years ago for 4 months in a row and I was just diagnosed with Diminished Ovarian Reserve at age 27! I've been told that the only option for me to have children is to adopt of IVF using donor eggs. I'm wondering if taking accutane is the culprit to why I've lost more eggs than women my age. The doctors don't know the exact reason, it could be hereditary, environmental or that I was just born with less eggs than the norm. I'm just devastated by this news.

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I took accutane for 12 months straight when I was 12. Now at 35 I have unexplained infertility.

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i was one of the first users of accutane in the early 80's for terrible cyctic acne and now I have a sperm count of zero. completely unexplained; no blockage...just zero.

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I wonder if we could get a university interested in doing a research study on the effects of accutane. It would only need to be a basic statistical study: what percentage of people have infertility issues who took accutane, compared the percentage of people who did not. I just don't know how we could approach them and suggest that to medical departments at universities. A study like that would give us hard evidence that should be very persuasive in court.

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INATI, I am not going to waste my time trying to explain to you how isotretinoin can cause such a wide variety of permanent side effects. However, people all over this world are affected by this drug and it is extremely more common than whatever you may think. When my dermatologist prescribed this drug to me she said that the chance of having permanent side effects was 2% and she said that the people who were affected should not have taken the drug because they had preexisting conditions. This percentage is just what the manufacturer claimed. Of course she reassured me that I would not be affected because I was healthy. I told her about all my side effects during the course, the dry skin, the ankle pain, the back pain, the muscle pain, the skin sensitivity, the depression, the poor night vision and she told me that all of these are normal side effects. As for you blaming acne, what a bunch of nonsense, but you sound like the typical ignorant dermatologist. I had one measly pimple, not acne or whatever the definition of acne is, one pimple. She prescribed me 1.6mg/kg/day for 6 months which is a total cumulative dose of 289 mg/kg. You know why I am affected with so many side effects? Well, it’s quite simple. I ingested the drug. I will be permanently affected and will continue to get worse every day. There are many of us around the world. Also, I have no autoimmune diseases, and if I get diagnosed with one later, well, it will be caused by the Accutane that I stupidly took years ago. You see autoimmune diseases are fairly common in people who have taken Accutane. The honest rheumatologists will admit to a link between prior Accutane use and autoimmune diseases. Also, the honest endocrinologists will admit to a link between prior Accutane use and infertility in both females and males. And for doctors, I have been to plenty of doctors and have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on them. An endocrinologist you say? All they can do is prescribe hormones for my early post-menopausal range hormone values. And let me go ahead and stop you before you even start with babying your Accutane and claiming that my values were probably in this range before Accutane. I had hormonal diagnostics done about 6 months before the course, not because anything was wrong, but I was just curious and it was free. My hormones were perfect then. It was not until one month after Accutane that I aged at an accelerated rate and my hormones were perfect for an 80-year old woman. I have no idea why you are on this thread and posting insensitive and ignorant comments, but it needs to finally come to an end. We have enough problems to deal with from the devastating effects that Accutane has caused us.

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I too was on Accutane as a teenager and experienced infertility as an adult. I was fortunate enough that the drug Clomid worked for me and I was able to have two children. I believe without the infertility treatments it would not have been possible for me to conceive.

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I took accutane as a teenager (13). I have just been diagnosed with infertility due to 'borderline pcos' even though i dont have cysts. im 22 now, and im certain it was accutane.

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Isotretinoin use compromises fertility.

karger.com/Article/Pdf/371551

This is just one of many ways that the drug ages you at an accelerated rate. It is chemotherapy that has permanent side effects. Dermatologists will continue to stand behind this drug for some reason, but they will never give it to their own children.

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INATI, You don't believe that this drug can cause all of these problems because you haven't taken it. So go ahead, take it and then you can come back and praise it. Come back in 6 months after you stopped taking the drug and talk about how it didn't cause your dry skin, dry eyes, hair loss, low libido, tinnitus and digestive problems. Then in 1 year, how it didn't cause your back and joint pain. In 2 years, how it didn't cause your extreme fatigue and weakened immune system. In 5 years, how it didn't cause your Type 1 diabetes and hypothyroidism. Oh and how it has nothing to do with your infertility that you have now been diagnosed with too. In 10 years, how it has nothing to do with your inflammatory bowel disease that required your colon to be removed. In 15 years, how it has nothing to do with your inability to get out of bed because of the extreme weakness and excruciating pain felt throughout your body. In 20 years, how it has nothing to do with your degenerative disc disease, osteonecrosis of your jaw, and kidney failure. So go ahead and TAKE IT. Take it and don't blame your problems on some drug that you took 20 years ago.

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Hey! Just wanted to pipe in that I took accutane as a teenager and am currently (surprise and unplanned- I was off of birth control for two months and my husband and I were using a different form of birth control) pregnant with my first! So if you're reading this forum and worried, take hope.

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I too took Accutane as a teenager twice and am infertile.

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Wow, reading all of this gives me chills...I have had a very similar experience. My husband I have been trying unsuccessfully to conceive for almost two years. I took accutane for 6 months in my early 20's. After countless tests, the doctors say I have 'borderline pcos' (raised AMH level) thyroid issues and uterine cervical stenosis. I shudder to think that this could be caused by taking Accutane and I could have prevented this heartbreak by not taking that drug.

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I have always wondered about this - I am 48 and also took accutane in my 20's. I had two miscarriages and was never able to have children after taking the medication. I am the only woman in my family to suffer from infertility.

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Not to be rude, at all, but I'm 17 and I took the drug a few years ago and every time I got a months supply, there was the pharmacy info thing that's attached to the bag, the a yellow and white paper attached to the drug packet. And the white paper actually had like the chemistry of the drug, and the statistics of the side effects. One of them was sterility, you know like the percentage in a given number of patients that were human, not hamsters or dogs. I can't really sympathize seeing as I haven't tried to have any kids, but my cousin took it not long after it came out and she's been trying for 12 years to get pregnant and has had one miscarriage, and a failed In vitro fertilization attempt. I started researching this when all these law commercials came out, and I read somewhere that some of the problems were first initiated by too much vitamin A, and the chemical make up of Accutane is supposed to be like vitamin A. So as of late, my problems so far are not reproductive. My lips don't stay chapped like where you can see the dryness, but I feel the constant need to apply chapstick that tingles. I have a sunken vertebrate in my back and have that weird back pain you get when you straighten up from pushing a heavy box or washing your face. People should sue for the little side effects too, because they can lead to bigger problems. Exaggerated, but in the future my spine may start to deteriorate, a fragment might break off, then damage my spinal cord and paralyze me. In the 50's, Thalidomide was introduced to help curb morning sickness. And what's important to a pharmacist is the isomer structure of the drug. Drugs are enantiomers, which are isomers that are mirror images of one another. And an isomer is a compound that has the same number of atoms of the same elements, but are arranged differently. So anyway, one enantiomer of this drug relieved the morning sickness, the other did nothing but cause birth defects. And of course changing the arrangement for the bad one would create a whole new drug. So basically some women got lucky and had no problems, and some did, depending on which enatiomer was dominant. Drugs that have been on the market for years, like Paxil and stuff have come up with these lawsuits, so this proves that no matter how many years a drug has been out, you won't know what it can do, since they are highly sensitive to molecular and chemical changes. Maybe this is the case with Accutane. I've read where women and men have had no problems and swear up and down the drug is a miracle, then I go to sites like this and see these posts. I personally think there are too many women and men proclaiming problems to be making it up, so really the issue is finding what the trigger in the medication is. Believe it or not, the smallest finding could impact and reverse the diagnosis of many of ya'll. I'm not a doctor, although I plan to be one, but idk. Biology makes me think like this so really it could have caused a chemical reaction that can be fixed. I know anyone who is reading this is probably like what the world, but maybe this will inspire some questions that can lead to a solution. And sorry this is so long.

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I was on accutane when I was a teenager, my husband and I have been trying and trying for over a year now to get pregnant (even with the help of my obgyn) to no avail.

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I took Accutane at the age of 22 for 6 months, i am now having so far unsucessful ivf. The diagnosis is PCOS. I firmly believe Accutane is the cause of this.

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I took 4 rounds of Accutane beginning at age 26. I've been trying to conceive since I was 33 (I am now 44). I was diagnosed with diminished ovarian reserve and poor egg quality since age 36. In the back of my mind I've always wondered whether the Accutane could have caused this. I am now pursuing egg donation to get pregnant.

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I took accutane about 16 years age. I have had one still born birth of a little baby girl and two miscarriages after being off this medication for at least five years. My doctors don't understand why I am not able to carry to full term and I am only 29. I been to two different infertility doctors and went through many rounds of iui treatments with clomid with no sucess. I have dealt with cysts and abnormal periods. I also was diagnosed with axial spondylitis which is an autoimmune diseases. My mother called me one day and suggested I research accutane because of all the media report. So I did and found out that this drug does sometime caused spontaneous abortion. I am very upset that they never warned me about infertility being a possible side effect.

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