Lindane: uses, dosing, side effects & brands
Lindane is a medicine sold in the U.S. under one brand. Below: what the FDA label says, every product that contains it, what the pills look like, and its recall record.
Key facts
- Available as
- Topical
- Sold as
- Kwell
- Prescription?
- Prescription only
- Generic available?
- Not in our catalog
Every lindane product we track (1)
Same active ingredient — different manufacturer, form, price and FDA recall record. That last one is what our independent score measures.
Only one: Kwell.
Lindane and breastfeeding
From LactMed, the US National Library of Medicine’s Drugs and Lactation Database — quoted, not rewritten.
Full LactMed record for lindane: levels in milk, effects in breastfed infants, and the drugs it would consider insteadTopical application of lindane can increase lindane milk levels for at least several days. Because it is potentially toxic in infants, is a persistent environmental contaminant, and possibly has estrogenic effects that could decrease lactation as well as affect the nursing infant, another agent should be used rather than lindane.
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, record revised October 15, 2024. LactMed states its information is not a substitute for professional judgement.
What people report to the FDA about lindane
The FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) collects reports from patients and clinicians. It holds 129 reports naming lindane, and the FDA flagged 67% of those reports as serious. The effects reported most often — leaving out reports about overdose, misuse or the condition being treated, which dominate the raw list for common medicines:
- convulsion17 reports
- vomiting16 reports
- headache15 reports
- nausea12 reports
- alopecia9 reports
- drug toxicity9 reports
- pruritus9 reports
- diarrhoea8 reports
Read these as a signal, not a rate. A report does not mean lindane caused the effect — anyone can file one, and many describe people taking several medicines for several conditions. Crucially there is no denominator: FAERS does not record how many people took the drug, so these counts cannot be turned into “X% of patients” — a bigger number often just means a more widely used or more talked-about drug. Duplicates exist, and publicity drives reporting. For what is actually established, read the FDA label section above.
Source: openFDA drug/event (FAERS), retrieved July 25, 2026.
Related calculators
Frequently asked questions
Can you take lindane with other medicines?
It depends on the medicine. We check it against the FDA labels rather than guessing: our interaction checker searches each drug's own label for the other and quotes what it says, naming the section it came from. Run lindane against whatever else you take — and remember that a label not naming a drug is not the same as that combination being safe.
What forms does lindane come in?
Across the brands we track, lindane is currently marketed as topical, per the FDA's National Drug Code Directory. Each form is dosed differently — follow the label for the exact product you were prescribed.
Is there a generic lindane?
We do not currently list a generic-labelled lindane product. That does not always mean none exists — it means none appears under a generic name in the FDA data we track. Ask your pharmacist.
Cite this page
- APA
- pharmaranks. (2026, July 24). Lindane: uses, dosing, side effects & brands. https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/lindane
- MLA
- “Lindane: uses, dosing, side effects & brands.” pharmaranks, 24 July 2026, https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/lindane.
We summarise public FDA and NIH sources — for a clinical claim, cite the primary source we link to as well.
Sources: FDA openFDA drug label, National Drug Code Directory, and Enforcement (recall) database. This page reproduces public FDA data and is not medical advice. Dosing is set by your prescriber.
Read the full FDA label for lindane on DailyMed (NIH) ↗.