Selenium Sulfide: uses, dosing, side effects & brands
Selenium Sulfide 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
- Selsun
- Prescription?
- Prescription only
- Generic available?
- Not in our catalog
- What the pharmacy pays
- about $0.17 per ml — not your price
Every selenium sulfide 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: Selsun.
How long selenium sulfide keeps
No selenium sulfide label we read sets a separate limit for after opening, but they do specify how it must be stored — and the stability behind any date assumes those conditions.
Does selenium sulfide expire? The in-use limits and storage rules from its labelsWhat people report to the FDA about selenium sulfide
The FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) collects reports from patients and clinicians. It holds 686 reports naming selenium sulfide, and the FDA flagged 54% 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:
- nausea35 reports
- fatigue32 reports
- pruritus29 reports
- rash27 reports
- anxiety26 reports
- vomiting25 reports
- headache24 reports
- diarrhoea23 reports
Read these as a signal, not a rate. A report does not mean selenium sulfide 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 26, 2026.
Related calculators
Frequently asked questions
Can you take selenium sulfide 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 selenium sulfide 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 selenium sulfide come in?
Across the brands we track, selenium sulfide 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 selenium sulfide?
We do not currently list a generic-labelled selenium sulfide 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). Selenium Sulfide: uses, dosing, side effects & brands. https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/selenium-sulfide
- MLA
- “Selenium Sulfide: uses, dosing, side effects & brands.” pharmaranks, 24 July 2026, https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/selenium-sulfide.
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 selenium sulfide on DailyMed (NIH) ↗.