Kathy Perea will not forget the pain she suffered when her gallbladder began to fail. “It was horrible,” the 27-year-old mother of five told KTNV-TV. “I was throwing up so much that the vessels in my eyes were bursting because I was straining myself so bad.”
After a routine flight to visit family in Florida, Sara Golieb’s tendonitis in her leg was growing particularly bothersome for the athletic, 25-year-old. “I had never felt pain like this in my foot or leg,” she wrote in an essay on the National Alliance for Thrombosis & Thrombophilia website. “I knew there was something wrong … in my wildest dreams, I did not think my symptoms could be due to a blood clot.”
Dawn Varrechio, a mother of four, was shocked to discover that her breathing problems were due to blood clots in both of her lungs. But she became angry when she found out her birth control pills were the culprit. “It’s scary to think that at 35, you could be gone, like that quickly,” she told CBS3 News.
Irina Shiryaeva was ecstatic when her family won the “green card lottery,” earning them sought-after immigration papers allowing them to leave their hometown in Russia and move to the United States. But her dream was cut short when she died shortly after arriving in the United States. Irina suffered from a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot in her lungs. Doctors theorized it was the long, nine-hour plane ride coupled with her recent use of birth control pills.
Holly Grigg-Spall, columnist for the UK’s The Independent, says the revolutionary birth control pill had nothing to do with turning her into a women’s health writer and activist. In fact, it gave her something to complain about.
The stories have become too familiar. Young women mysteriously stricken with life threatening blood clots, a direct result of their birth control pill. Leanne Letendre is one of the latest victims. Just last year the young mother became extremely fatigued while doing housework. “I couldn’t even make it up a flight of stairs. I had to go up three stairs, stop and then finish,” she told WBZ-TV. “I was so sick, I couldn’t even think.”
As Bayer HealthCare begins defending itself against a flurry of lawsuits citing health problems over its blockbuster birth control pills Yaz and Yasmin, the drug company announced it has received approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on a new oral contraceptive. Bayer’s Natazia combines the hormones estrogen and progestin in doses that adjust four times throughout a women’s menstruation cycle. Natazia is the first birth control pill to use the four-phase dosing protocol with the added benefit of controlling irregular bleeding better than other pills.
The contraceptive business has boomed since the birth control pill hit the market 50 years ago. Now birth control comes in the form of pills, patches, rings, implants and intrauterine devices, and the makers of such products claim they are even safer than before. Judging by the thousands lawsuits filed by women who claim they suffered life-threatening blood clots, strokes and gallbladder problems because of the contraceptives, safety may still be an issue. But Salon.com opinion editor Geraldine Sealey claims birth control pills brought on another, less known, side effect – the loss of her libido.
Bayer boasted a 63.1 percent increase in net income for the first quarter of 2010, but the firm’s pharmaceutical sales were a big disappointment, according to PharmaTimes. Bayer posted increases in its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization as well as in its group turnover. However Bayer’s health care sales stayed flat while pharmaceutical revenues fell a disappointing 2.2 percent.
