Does Restasis make your eyelashes fall out?

Restasis (cyclosporine ophthalmic emulsion) should not make your eyelashes fall out. Clinical trials of Restasis have not identified loss of eyelashes or any other changes in eyelash growth to be a potential side effect of using Restasis eye drops.

While there is no evidence that Restasis should have any effect on eyelashes, older studies have suggested that Restasis could potentially be linked to both excessive eyelash growth and eyelash shortening. One 2011 case report in Case Reports in Ophthalmology described a patient who developed elongated eyelashes after using Restasis for 5 months. In contrast with this finding, an older study from 2007 in the International Journal of Immunopathology and Pharmacology found that in a very small group of children with an allergic eye condition (vernal keratoconjunctivitis), those treated with Restasis had shorter eyelashes than those who were not using Restasis. However, the authors suggest that patients with vernal keratoconjunctivitis often have elongated eyelashes as a protective symptom of the condition and that the potential shortening effect of Restasis is a natural result of treating the disease itself.