Mental health drug taken by millions caused woman’s face to ‘burn off’

A woman was left with severe burn-like marks, blisters and scarring across her face for more than two months after suffering a rare reaction to a commonly prescribed mood stabiliser.

Doctors say the 42-year-old – who did not share her name – developed the life-threatening condition after taking lamotrigine, a drug used to treat bipolar disorder and epilepsy.

Millions of prescriptions for lamotrigine are issued every year in the UK, and around two million people in the United States are thought to take it.

Her medical team believe the drug triggered toxic epidermal necrolysis (TEN) – a severe skin reaction – which rapidly spread across her face, head, neck and torso.

The condition, most often linked to medications such as anti-epileptic drugs, antibiotics and anti-inflammatories, is extremely rare but can be fatal.

The woman had been prescribed lamotrigine to treat depression, and first developed symptoms around three weeks later, which progressively worsened.

She was eventually rushed to intensive care at Hospital Beneficencia Portuguesa in São Paulo, Brazil – by which point her face was almost entirely covered in painful lesions.

Images taken during her hospital stay show the shocking progression of the condition.

On the first day of admission, her face was covered in raw lesions. By the second day, her skin had turned dark purple and begun to peel.

By day four, it had blackened, with burn-like damage most severe around her mouth.

In the first few days of treatment, her condition appeared to deteriorate further, as layers of skin continued to break down.

Doctors treated her with multiple antibiotics and applied an antibacterial biomaterial to help support tissue regeneration.

After four days, she began to show signs of improvement, and her care continued with regular monitoring.

Following one month of treatment, the woman’s face was showing signs of improvement – though it was still heavily scarred.

She remained in hospital for 66 days, with her skin gradually healing over time.

At a follow-up appointment six months after discharge, doctors described the recovery of the affected areas as ‘excellent’.

While rare, reactions to lamotrigine have been reported before.

Earlier this year, the Daily Mail reported the case of Emily McAllister, a mother from Chicago who lost around 90 per cent of her skin – including on her face – after developing a similar condition known as Stevens-Johnson syndrome, linked to the drug.

She was also left permanently blind despite undergoing multiple reconstructive surgeries.

Ms McAllister first noticed symptoms around 16 days after starting the medication, including red, dry eyes and swelling of her lips and face.

These quickly escalated into a painful, spreading rash.

She said: ‘I thought I wasn’t sure what it was, I just knew something didn’t feel right. The second day, my sister came to my house, and I was pretty incoherent.

‘I was having a hard time breathing and was disoriented. That’s when the rash started to spread across my face and left me with blisters. It was very painful.’

As her condition worsened, she was admitted to hospital and placed in a burns unit for seven weeks.

Over the next three years, she endured the loss of 87 per cent of her skin and underwent a series of major procedures, including eyelid reconstruction, a stem cell transplant, a salivary gland transplant, and multiple surgeries to treat internal scarring.

She added: ‘There’s not enough awareness about SJS – you trust your doctor, then something like this happens.

‘Before this, I never would’ve worried about any medication prescribed by a doctor.’