Premarin: In the News

The hormone replacement therapy (HRT) drugs Premarin and Prempro continues to be in the news. Most reports have been about the numerous lawsuits against Wyeth who produces the drugs. However, recently there have been some other interesting revelations.

Martha Rosenberg leads with this in her article for AlterNet:

Selling a product that causes cancer isn’t easy, but with help from a U.S. endocrinologist group, Wyeth is again obscuring the truth about HRT.

Rosenberg tells us:

Since HRT was found by the Women’s Health Initiative in 2002 to cause a 26 percent increased risk of breast cancer, 29 percent increased risk of heart attack, 41 percent increased risk of stroke and 100 percent increased risk of blood clots, a study in the January issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention found the cancers also move quickly.

Women who took combined estrogen/progestin hormone-replacement therapy for just three years had four times the usual risk of lobular breast cancer, which accounts for about 10 percent of invasive breast cancer.

The effect of millions of HRT users saying, “You want us to take WHAT?” after the WHI study — 75 percent quit — was also dramatic. There was an 8.6 percent reduction in overall breast cancer between 2001 and 2004 and 14.7 reduction for estrogen-receptor positive breast cancer.

But “studies” by doctors who don’t want to give up the HRT gravy train appear with increasing regularity, promoting results that seek to reverse or spin the WHI findings.

But “studies” by doctors who don’t want to give up the HRT gravy train appear with increasing regularity, promoting results that seek to reverse or spin the WHI findings.

HRT actually protects against heart disease and reduces calcification of the arteries — two original, disproved HRT selling points — say the authors of the new crop of “timing hypothesis/therapeutic window of opportunity” analyses, hoping the memory of the American public is as short as their practice’s funds without trumped up HRT profits.

Researchers even resuscitated the discredited claim that HRT protects against dementia at a meeting of the American Academy of Neurology last year. And there are rumblings that HRT’s ability to lower colon cancer could be of value. (HRT causes breast cancer, heart attack, stroke and blood clots but you might not get colon cancer!)

Of course some doctors have noted the creeping HRT revisionism.

Enthusiasm for the “Yes, but” studies “far exceeds the science” and does not “alter current recommendations that hormone therapy should never be used to prevent heart disease,” says Dr. Helen Roberts, senior lecturer in women’s health at Auckland University. For one thing, “the risk of stroke was elevated regardless of how many years had elapsed since menopause,” she says of the new studies.

But others like the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) have jumped on the HRT bandwagon.

“This is an important and meaningful analysis for women who can benefit from Hormone Replacement Therapy,” said Richard Hellman, AACE President about a study which indicated HRT did not elevate cardiovascular disease risk in some women.

And a position paper on the AACE site says, “Given the powerful effects of estrogen therapy in relieving menopausal symptoms, we believe that physicians may safely counsel women to use estrogen for the relief of menopausal symptoms.”

Some suggest Wyeth money is behind the AACE position. (1)

The WHI recently revealed use of HRT also makes it harder to detect breast cancer.

Peggy Peck, Executive Editor, MedPage Today reports:

Use of estrogen plus progestin appears to make breast cancer more difficult to detect by both screening mammography and biopsy, according to a post hoc analysis of data from the Women’s Health Initiative study.

The authors concluded that combined hormone therapy not only increased the risk of breast cancer, but also “compromises the diagnostic performance of mammograms and breast biopsies.” (2)

Natural News says there is a safe alternative called Estriol. However, Wyeth is reportedly bullying the FDA into blocking its sales in the U.S.

Virginia Hopkins who wrote the piece reports:

The FDA has begun 2008 by forbidding compounding pharmacists to use estriol in their natural hormone formulations because the agency doesn’t have a specified approved use for it. They took this action because Wyeth complained about it. And yet, Wyeth-Pharma sells two types of estriol drugs in Europe, so we know this is not a safety and efficacy issue.

In case you’ve forgotten, Wyeth is the giant pharmaceutical company that makes Premarin and PremPro, synthetic hormones found to cause heart disease, strokes and cancer. If we do some rough calculations based on statistics from the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), Wyeth’s hormone replacement drugs have killed tens of thousands of women over the past few decades. Sales of these dangerous drugs have plummeted since the WHI results were announced, and women who were injured by them and sued, are winning millions in damages in courtrooms around the U.S. (3)

What does this have to do with horses?

The name for Wyeth’s drug Premarin is derived from the phrase “pregnant mare’s urine.”

The makers of this drug are not only responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of women, but also for the mares incarcerated in stalls and milked for their urine, and their foals.

Read our Fact Sheet

Other Points of Interest

• The Madison, NJ-based Wyeth faces 5,300 Prempro- and Premarin-related law suits in addition to the one it just lost — but with damages reduced — in Reno, NV brought by three women with breast cancer.
• Jurors, who began deliberating last week, said on Monday that Wyeth inadequately warned Donna Scroggin that its drugs Premarin and Prempro carried an increased risk of breast cancer. The lawsuit, in Federal District Court in Little Rock, also named Upjohn, the maker of Provera.(4)
• In January, the drug giant announced it was selling the one million square-foot Rouses Point, NY plant, where it made its horse-urine derived drugs, and cut fully 10 percent of its work force.

Sources:

(1) http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/77906/
(2) http://www.medpagetoday.com/HematologyOncology/BreastCancer/tb/8496
(3) http://www.naturalnews.com/022751.html
(4) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/business/26wyeth.html?ref=business