Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

Two new studies showing an increased risk in venous thromboembolism (VTE), or blood clots in the lungs, in women who use Yaz birth control pills and oral contraceptives with similar hormone formulations, has resulted in a special drug safety notification from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Yaz, made by Bayer, contains the progestin drospirenone. The same hormone is used in Bayer’s Yasmin, Beyaz and Safyral, as well as generics such as Ocella, Gianvi, Loryna, Syeda, and Zarah.

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For women, choosing a birth control method is complicated. For starters, birth control pills carry a frightening list of warnings on their safety labels. While the risks are considered remote, it’s hard to trust drug companies when they say their medication is safe. Just look at the thousands of lawsuits drug maker Bayer is facing over its top-selling oral contraceptives Yaz and Yasmin. The lawsuits claim the pharmaceutical company didn’t warn users that they were at even greater risk for deadly blood clots, heart attacks and strokes.

It’s time women put the burden of contraception on the men.

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Bayer is trying to silence the critics of its blockbuster birth control pills Yaz and Yasmin by taking nay-sayers to court. But even in Europe where the laws don’t always guarantee free speech, Bayer is hardly getting a sympathetic ear.

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Bayer isn’t backing down. The pharmaceutical giant that is making billions off sales of it’s popular birth control pills Yaz and Yasmin, says two new studies that suggest the company’s oral contraceptives put women at greater risk for blood clots than older generation pills, are flawed.

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Bayer has long denied that its birth control pills, Yaz and Yasmin, put women at greater risk for life threatening blood clots, but a new study published in the British Medical Journal says the “fourth generation” oral contraceptives, which contain the progestin drospirenone, put women at twice the risk for blood clots than those that contain the hormone levonorgestrel.

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Women who take birth control pills with the hormone drospirenone, such as Yaz and Yasmin, are at greater risk of gallbladder damage than women on other oral contraceptives, according to a new Canadian study. The new research involved 2.7 million women who took birth control pills for at least six months between 1997 and 2009. A total of 27,087 women in the study group underwent surgery to have their gallbladders removed. The study found that while all birth control pills put women at some risk for losing their gallbladders, women who use pills with drospirenone were at greater risk.

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Women who use birth control pills are at greater risk for developing blood clots during the first six months of oral contraceptive use, and they are at even greater risk when first starting the pill and when restarting the same pill or a different pill after a four-week or greater break.

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More teenagers are using birth control pills than ever before, and by far the most popular brand they are choosing is Yaz, according to a new study by Thomson Reuters. But some worry that using Bayer Healthcare’s blockbuster oral contraceptive may be putting those young girls at greater risk for serious health problems.

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Lawyers for the pharmaceutical giant Bayer are overwhelmed by the “overly burdensome discovery requests” made by attorneys for the thousands of women and their family members who have filed suit against Bayer. The drug company has turned over some 40 million pages of documents related to Yaz and Yasmin’s warnings, safety, labeling and sales and market, and say they have up to 30 million more pages yet to surrender. Bayer’s attorneys have asked for a protective order to stop the mountain of paperwork, but the plaintiffs attorneys say they want all the documents as they are imperative to the lawsuit filed against the drug company.

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Europe’s biggest drug company, Bayer AG, has won a lawsuit in the United Kingdom, protecting the patent on its birth control pill Yasmin against a challenge by Hungary’s Gedeon Richter Nyrt. Justice Christopher Floyd ruled in the High Court of London that the inventions the patents covered for Yasmin would not have been “obvious” to experts in the industry. The ruling is in contrast to a case in the United States in 2008, in which the Yasmin patent was found to be invalid because it was “obvious” to other experts in the field. That ruling opened the door for Israel’s massive generic drug manufacturer, Teva Pharmaceuticals Industries Ltd., to sell a version of Yasmin, known as Ocella, in the United States.

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