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.
It was mere hours after Rebecca Bapp called her parents to say that she wasn’t feeling well that the 21-year-old was dead. Mysteriously, her health declined so rapidly even doctors were baffled by what was making her so ill. Not long after her parents rushed her to the hospital, she was placed on a breathing machine and sedated. She coded three times before she gave up her fight for life.
The birth control pill for women has been around for more than 50 years, and during that time, no one has tackled a similar contraceptive for men, until now. Researchers have developed a contraceptive for men that can be taken orally, injected or applied topically. The medication releases small amounts of testosterone into the bloodstream to stop the production of sperm. Men will still be able to ejaculate but their ability to impregnate a woman would be compromised as long as they are on the medication.
Pharmaceutical manufacturer Bayer is facing thousands of lawsuits questioning the safety of its birth control pills Yaz and Yasmin. The pills, which contain a combination of drospirenone and ethinyl estradiol, have been found in studies to put women at greater risk for life threatening blood clots than oral contraceptives with other types of hormones. Both Yaz and Yasmin have generic equivalents, which leaves some women questioning whether generic brands are safer than the brand name drugs.
The family of a 15-year-old North Carolina girl who was taking the birth control pill Yasmin to treat her acne and then died of a pulmonary embolism, are suing the drug’s maker Bayer, claiming the company did not adequately warn users of the potentially deadly health risks associated with its oral contraceptive.
Health Canada, Canada’s regulator of drugs, is conducting a safety review of the birth control pills Yaz and Yasmin to determine if the pills put women at greater risk for blood clots than other oral contraceptives.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says it will keep a watchful eye on studies comparing drospirenone-containing birth control pills with levonorgestrel-containing oral contraceptives to determine if one is more dangerous to users. Two recent studies published in the British Medical Journal found pills with drospirenone were two to three times more likely to cause blood clots in women who used them.
Birth control pills with the hormone drospirenone include Bayer’s Yaz, Yasmin, Beyaz and Safyral, as well as generics Ocella, Gianvi, Loryna, Syeda, and Zarah. The FDA says it hopes to have data later this summer from an 800,000-person study it commissioned to examine the risks.
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.
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.
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.
