Acute Kidney Injury and Hair-Straightening Products

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Acute kidney injury (AKI) is common and can affect 8.3% of ambulatory patients and up to 32% of hospitalized patients.1 The main causes of AKI are acute tubular necrosis, and prerenal and acute on chronic renal failure. Recently, Robert et al.2 describe a case of AKI presumed due to hair-straightening products containing glyoxylic acid. A mouse model revealed the presence of elongated calcium oxalate monohydrate crystals in urine, similar to those observed after ethylene glycol intoxication. These results provide evidence that hair-straightening creams containing glyoxylic acid may be responsible for calcium oxalate–induced nephropathy after hair-straightening procedures (Table 1).