Yaz likely cause of girl’s damaged gallbladder
When Katie Ketner was 15, she met with a gynecologist about birth control. The doctor told Katie that Yaz “helped people regulate their menstruation, helped people control their acne, and things like that,” Katie remembers. The ads for Yaz were everywhere then, colorful commercials with smiling women praising the pill that not only prevented pregnancy, but also squashed irritability and moodiness associated with premenstrual syndrome as well as cleared up bothersome acne. It was an easy sale for Katie.
“Should I still be on Yasmin?” asks Beth on a Drugs.com forum. The woman has been taking the popular birth control pills for two years and suddenly developed migraines with blurry vision. Soon after, she had knee surgery and developed a very large blood clot in her leg, called a deep vein thrombosis, or DVT. Doctors put her on the blood thinner coumadin and told her to continue taking Yasmin, but Beth is worried. “I’m swelled up like a balloon,” she writes. “Should I really still be on Yasmin?”
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.
Rebecca Anderson-Hull of Texas blames her birth control pills for damaging her brain and forcing her to need assistance walking, eating and even being understood. It happened two years ago when the 46-year-old mother of three suddenly and unexpectedly suffered a pulmonary embolism, or a blood clot in her lungs. She was rushed to the hospital but the lack of oxygen had caused massive brain damage. She will never be able to care for herself again, doctors said.