Hairy Tongue in Patients Receiving Phenothiazines: Preliminary Report

In an Indiscriminate survey of 896 patients at Pilgrim State Hospital, 20 patients possessed a hairy tongue. 2. Three of these patients were on no drugs whatsoever. 3. Seventeen patients were on chlorpromazine or chlorpromazine and mepazine. 4. Five of these 17 patients lost their hairy tongue afteŕ discontinuance of medication. It obviously cannot be stated definitely that the phenothiazines cause hairy tongue. But, as noted above, the 5 patients whose medication was discontinued lost their hairy tongue within 2 weeks. The rest of the patients still retain their hairy tongue while receiving their medication. This seems to point the finger of suspicion toward the phenothiazines, especially in view of the well-established concept that other drugs, notably the antibiotics, have been found to cause this condition. The occurrence of the 3 cases of hairy tongue in patients receiving no medication also points out the possibility of this being purely co-incidental. In addition, there lurks in the background of all these patients the fact that most of those with hairy tongue possess poor oral hygiene and are heavy smokers or tobacco chewers. Further studies of this problem are being carried out in an attempt to correlate all these findings. The observation is considered to be of interest and importance and is, therefore, reported in this preliminary study as a possible complication in the use of phenothiazine drugs.