Family alleges toothpaste killed hyper-allergic girl

A friend sent me a link to the following article for this blawg, which I would place in the oddity category. 

The UK newspaper the Daily Mail is reporting (read here) that a British family believes that a 'repackaged' toothpaste caused anaphylactic shock in a young lady moments after she brushed her teeth.  She had suffered from asthma and severe allergies her entire life.  Although the coroner did not attribute her death to the toothpaste, another pathologist told the inquest hearing that toothpaste 'could cause severe reactions' and that toothpaste, mouthwash and tampons have been known to cause such reactions.  The coroner concluded that she died from a severe anaphylactic reaction and asthma, but did not link it to the toothpaste.

The family claimed that the packaging on her usual toothpaste had changed.  But the manufacturer said that the contents of the toothpaste had not changed since 2001.  The manufacturer also pointed out that they had only a handful of complaints and that they all were of a localized nature.

The media reporting is symptomatic of the challenges that the medical device industry faces every day with regard to bad things that happen in temporal relationship to the use of a product.  There is no evidence that an allergic reaction to toothpaste caused this death.  The coroner did not conclude that it did.  However, because the very understandably grief stricken family thought that there was a relationship, the media implied in its headline that there was a relationship.  The fact that the family believes that there might be a relationship between the toothpaste and her death is not evidence of such a relationship.