Roaccutane/accutane side effects: muscle pains

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Greetings, my 23-yr-old girlfriend is on 20mg roaccutane a day and is on week 40 of a year-long course. Her teenage experiences of acne have serverely undermined her confidence and she's determined to see the course thru. However, she has such terrible pain in her joints and her legs generally as  a side-effect that 2 days at work as hairdresser leaves her near-crippled for days afterwards, crawling around the flat on her bum and in agony after a 10-min walk to shops and back. She's neglected to tell her dermo and doctor the severity of these side-effects for fear of being  refused the remainder of her course. I know these particular side-effects are supposed to be common, but are they meant to be this immobilising? What advice should I give her? Any answers very gratefully received.   

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2 Replies

  • Posted

    Hello, its lovely that you are so carng about your girlfriend.

    My daughter (now 25) had Roacutane on three separate occasions. She had achey joints, very sore patchy skin and was very low at times. She didnt suffer such debilitating problems as your girlfriend and I would strongly urge her to see her GP, just to check that everything is ok. Is she having the regular checks and blood tests

  • Posted

    Hi, I am 41 and about 16 weeks into my 5 month course. I have all sorts of symptoms with mine from the standard dryness, itchiness to mouth ulcers bouts of thrush (sorry for the tmi) extremely dry and crusty nasal passages, bleeding gums but I too also noticed the joints aching so much more.  Most recently from wearing very flat shoes I've hurt both my heels and up to the back of my ankle and some days it's uncomfortable and some days it's agony to walk. I've not seen the dr or told my dermo about it as didn't think it was a symptom but maybe the whole body becomes much more sensitive and things take so much longer to heal.   I think if she's in that amount of pain she needs to get it looked at.   

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