The recent recommendations from a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory committee about safety concerns with contraceptives may make women more leery when deciding which birth control is best for them. But even for women who are currently on birth control, understanding the risks is vital.
Packs of Yaz and other birth control pills containing the hormone drospirenone should be updated to include a warning that the pills may be more likely to cause life threatening blood clots than older oral contraceptives, according to a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel. The expert board was charged by the FDA with reviewing new data on the safety of the pills and recommending what action the federal agency should take.
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.
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.
Carole Ann Grohan says she never knew taking Yaz birth control pills could put her life at risk. Instead, the New Jersey woman bought into the flashy commercials about how the oral contraceptive helped clear complexions and protected women from the nasty side effects of premenstrual syndrome (PMS).
Carole Ann wasn’t the only woman swayed by the playful advertisements – Yaz soon became the best selling birth control pill in the nation. However, Carole Ann found out the hard way that women like her were being fooled by Bayer Healthcare, the makers of Yaz. She suffered a blood clot in her lungs, known as a pulmonary embolism.
The number of lawsuits against Bayer for its top-selling birth control pill, Yaz, has climbed to more than 4,200. The lawsuits allege that Bayer knew its pills put women at risk for blood clots, strokes, and heart attacks, a common side effect with any oral contraceptive. However, nearly half of the lawsuits against Bayer allege that the pills caused damage to the gallbladder and in many instances resulted in gallbladder removal. Bayer dismisses the notion that its pills can cause gallbladder problems and maintains its pills are no more dangerous than other oral contraceptives.
You would think German drug giant Bayer would have learned its lesson not to overstate the benefits of its drugs in marketing campaigns after shelling out $20 million in advertising last year to correct claims that its blockbuster birth control pill Yaz was a cure-all for the bothersome symptoms of premenstrual syndrome while downplaying the risks associated with the drug.
Apparently, some lessons are never learned. The company has just agreed to pay another $3.3 million to Oregon, California and Illinois over ads for its vitamin One A Day Men’s Health Formula, that claim the supplement contains an ingredient that may reduce the risk of prostate cancer.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may have granted permission to drug companies to market generic versions of Bayer’s blockbuster birth control pills Yasmin and Yaz, but Bayer is not giving up its fight to prevent other companies from taking a bite out its profits. The German drug company said Wednesday it will continue trying to protects its patents on its pills despite a New York judge’s dismissal of Bayer’s latest patent infringement lawsuit late Tuesday against Watson Pharmaceuticals and Sandoz.
Watson Pharmaceuticals has received approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under the Abbreviated New Drug Application for Zarah, its new oral contraceptive pill that serves as a generic version of Bayer’s best-selling birth control pill Yasmin. Yasmin and its generic equivalents sold approximately $97 million in the U.S. for the twelve months ending June 30, 2010.
Sales of Yaz birth control pills fell 15 percent in the second quarter of 2010, which Bayer Corp. blames on increased competition from generics marketed in the United States by Teva Pharmaceutical Industries. Teva introduced its Yaz copycat, Gianvi, earlier this year only to be slapped with a patent lawsuit by Bayer. It’s not the first lawsuit Bayer has filed against Teva in hopes of protecting the multimillion dollar market share it has enjoyed with Yaz.
