News for December, 2008

Study finds Wyeth paid ghostwriters to promote Prempro

A federal study revealed that the pharmaceutical company Wyeth paid ghostwriters to write articles for medical journals that were favorable to the drug company’s hormone replacement therapy (HRT) Prempro, even after the drug was found to raise a woman’s risk for , according to the New York Times.

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Estrogen receptor-positive cancer easier to treat, study says

Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and its link to and other serious conditions continue to make headlines. This week, U.S. News & World Report announced that women who take and then get are at lower risk of dying from their disease, according to a new study by the University of California-Irvine.

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Cancer risk still elevated even years after stopping HRT

A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reveals that women who took hormone replacement therapy (HRT) face an increased risk of cancer several years after stopping the treatment, according to an NPR report.

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Heavier women suffer more hot flashes, study suggests

Overweight women suffer more hot flashes during menopause than women who maintain a normal weight, according to the Hartford Courant. The news story references a study published by the American Journal of Epidemiology that debunks an earlier belief that menopausal women who were heavier experienced fewer hot flashes than thin women.

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Menopause, heart attack symptoms sometimes can be similar

How can you tell if the physical symptoms you are experiencing are from menopause or from a much more serious problem like a heart attack? Dr. Jeff Hersh, a columnist with the Taunton Daily Gazette, recently addressed this question, noting that there are several misconceptions about heart disease in women that first must be understood.

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Wyeth faces more lawsuits for promoting sales despite concerns

In the 1960s, a New York gynecologist wrote a book called “Feminine Forever,” in which he recommended estrogen for menopause, stating that women on the replacement drug “will be much more pleasant to live with and will not become dull and unattractive.”

Wyeth Pharmaceuticals caught wind of the book and its author’s claims that estrogen reduced a woman’s risk for both breast and genital cancers, and began distributing the book to physicians across the country. Soon after, sales of Wyeth’s drug Premarin took off, growing to more than 30 million prescriptions each year.

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