Women whose hair failed to grow back after chemo are taking issue with the manufacturers of Taxotere, saying they weren’t properly warned about the extent of the drug’s side effects.

Taxotere is a chemotherapy drug used to treat a few different kinds of cancer.

In addition to being frequently used to treat breast cancer, it’s also approved as a treatment for advanced stomach cancer, head and neck cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, and metastatic prostate cancer.

For breast cancer patients, Taxotere is sometimes used to treat more advanced cancer that has not responded to other chemo drugs or that has spread to other parts of the body despite surgical treatment or use of standard chemotherapy drugs.

One of the benefits of Taxotere is a more convenient treatment regimen. It can be administered with fewer and less frequent doses than comparable chemo drugs.

For drug manufacturer Sanofi-Aventis, Taxotere has been a successful source of revenue. Most breast cancer patients in the U.S. get treated with Taxotere at some point during their treatment. Annual sales of Taxotere peaked in 2009 at more than $3 billion, just before Sanofi-Aventis lost its patent exclusivity.

Permanent Side Effects of Chemo

Like many chemo drugs, Taxotere can lead to hair loss. Chemotherapy hair loss happens because the drugs used tend to be most deadly to cells that divide rapidly.

Cancer cells are rapid dividers, making them easier targets for chemo drugs. But the cells in hair follicles also divide rapidly, so Taxotere tends to kill them the same way it kills cancer cells.

After chemo ends, hair follicle cells have a chance to grow back. How long that regrowth takes varies widely from person to person.

Normally, within two or three weeks after the end of chemotherapy, the patient will have regrown a soft fuzz. By about one month after finishing therapy, hair will have resumed growing at its normal rate. At around two months, about an inch of hair may have grown back.

The problem some Taxotere patients have reported facing is that their hair has taken much longer to grow back – sometimes years. Some patients report their hair has failed to grow back at all. These patients end up suffering from permanent chemotherapy hair loss, known clinically as alopecia.

Some scientific literature suggests that Taxotere side effects may indeed include permanent hair loss. In one study published in the Annals of Oncology in 2012, twenty women were afflicted with permanent alopecia following treatment that included docetaxel – the generic name for Taxotere.

Treatment such as vitamins, medications and ultraviolet therapy failed to regrow these women’s hair.

For women who never get their hair back, the harm is much more than just physical. Many of these women say the loss of hair is a constant reminder of what they went through fighting cancer. They say they must also live with the constant pain of continuing to look like a cancer patient even after they have recovered.

Some women whose hair did not grow back after they took Taxotere take issue with what they say are inadequate warnings about Taxotere side effects. They say they weren’t fully informed of the associated risks or offered alternative treatments to consider.

Some have also made allegations that Sanofi-Aventis concealed research that linked Taxotere to permanent hair loss.