Why you need to know the signs and symptoms of Stevens-Johnson Syndrome

This horror-movie condition is a little-known risk of some OTC meds

Five years ago Jasmin Bindom was 16 and finishing up her junior year at St. Mary’s Academy in New Orleans.

But instead of getting ready for summer vacation, the teen ended up in the hospital being put into a medically-induced coma. Her body swelled to three times its normal size; she lost just about all of her skin, hair and nails; and she came very close to losing her life.

What permanently scarred and almost killed Jasmin is a horrific drug side effect called Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, or SJS.

SJS isn’t like any other side effect you could imagine. It can leave you horribly scarred, blind, and crippled, with lifelong damage.

And the most frightening part is, it can happen to anyone.

The warning signs

We don’t often hear much about SJS — and most of us never even consider it before popping a prescription or OTC pill.

SJS is a severe allergic reaction to medication that basically burns your flesh from the inside out. Victims are often described as looking like they’d just been pulled from a pot of boiling water.

In Jasmin’s case, she took an Extra Strength Tylenol. When she started developing a rash, she went to the hospital where they gave her another OTC drug, Motrin. And that’s when things went downhill really fast.

While just about any med can trigger SJS, the condition has been most frequently caused by antibiotics, seizure drugs, and painkillers such as ibuprofen, naproxen and acetaminophen (like Tylenol).

And SJS can turn deadly quickly. It can start as a rash or painful blisters all over your body, and then rapidly progress to a stage called toxic epidermal necrolysis (what Jasmin had), where your skin starts falling off.

In fact, just a few years ago Johnson & Johnson was ordered to pay the family of a 13-year-old girl $10 million for having 84 percent of her body covered in burns after taking Motrin for a fever.

Jasmin and her family also filed a lawsuit against J&J, but the company made sure to confidentially settle the case right before the jury returned a verdict, claiming it must have been something else that caused her reaction.

Three years ago, the FDA even issued a “Drug Safety Alert” for SJS covering both prescription and OTC meds that contain acetaminophen, such as Tylenol. It even warned how these drugs could cause SJS and “detachment of the upper surface of the skin.”

Unfortunately, the agency practically made sure customers would ignore the alert by mentioning seven times how rare the reaction is.

But experts say that’s just not true. And there are far more SJS cases than our government would like to admit.

Jean Farrell founded the Stevens-Johnson Syndrome Foundation after her daughter Julie almost died from the condition. She said her group gets reports of 15 new cases a week — and that’s only through the Internet.

“SJS is not as rare as we are led to believe,” she said.

What makes SJS especially dangerous is that people may not realize that drugs are causing their symptoms. So they keep right on taking the very meds that might be killing them.

That’s why it’s important to spot these earliest signs of SJS, so you can stop your medications and call your doctor immediately:

Flu-like symptoms, which often signal the start of an SJS reaction.
A skin rash, blisters or red blotches that are often accompanied by a fever.
Blisters that appear in your mouth, eyes, ears, nose and around your genitals.
Pink eye or an abnormal swelling of your eyelids.

Also, Farrell warned that if a blood relative had a severe allergic reaction like SJS after taking a drug, you should consider yourself at risk for that medication and be extra careful to avoid it.

Sources:
“Settlement reached in case against makers of Tylenol by student” Meg Farris, July 2, 2016, WWLTV, wwltv.com