Essential
- Three weeks after taking ibuprofen to relieve pain-related pain, a 27-year-old woman has pseudo-Grippal symptoms then painful and extended blisters and her skin peels off.
- In the hospital, she receives a diagnosis of Stevens-Johnson syndrome, an inflammation of the immune system in response to a medication.
- Although she was placed in a coma to fight against septicemia and multivisceral failure, she woke up and still recalls complications today.
In August 2020, Aleshia Rogers, who lives in Lincoln in Nebraska, gave birth by Cesarean to his third child, Jaxon. After this delivery, she takes ibuprofen, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAIDs), twice a day to relieve the pain caused by the cesarean. Three weeks later, the 27-year-old woman begins to suffer from pseudo-grapple symptoms, including a high fever and a rash on the chest. “My eyes started to swell. They were injected with blood and burned me.” Worried, she goes twice to the hospital where doctors believe that it is a conjunctivitis or scarlatin. They then advise him to continue to take ibuprofen in order to reduce pain and swelling.
Stevens-Johnson syndrome: a potentially fatal reaction at ibuprofen
A few hours later, the mother’s face was covered with painful and extensive blisters and peeling skin, leaving her unrecognizable for her loved ones, according to the media The US Sun. She rushes to emergency and receives a diagnosis of Stevens-Johnson syndrome. This disease is characterized by the destruction and detachment of the skin and mucous epithelium on less than 10 % of the total body surface, according to the Orphanet. “Most cases are caused by a drug reaction”, specifies the MSD manual.
Quickly, the patient was transferred to an intensive unit for burned. “As the skin is your largest organ, it has caused septicemia and multivisceral failure.” It was therefore placed in an artificial coma. According to practitioners, its survival rate was 5 to 10 %, because “95 % of his skin had come off.” But against all odds, Aleshia woke up on a coma three weeks later. She learns that she had probably suffered from a rare and potentially fatal reaction to ibuprofen. “Ibuprofen was my reference medicine. I had taken almost my whole life, since the age of 14, to relieve menstrual pain. They do not know why I had this reaction. Doctors have not really explained. They just said that my body had decided not to appreciate it one day. It is very disturbing and confusing.”
“There is certainly a risk that it will come back at any time”
In 2025, five years after this incident, the American is still recovering long-term complications linked to Stevens-Johnson syndrome, which can occur in people with anomalies of the immune system (those who have received a bone marrow transplant, with a systemic lupus erythematosus, chronic diseases of connective tissues or joints, an infection HIV). “There is no prevention and once it starts, we can do nothing to stop it. And there is certainly a risk that it will come back at any time”, said the mother.