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New birth control pill approved that will give you only four periods a year. Read below. It will be on sale in about a month.
Barr Gets Approval for Extended Oral Contraceptive
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Barr Laboratories has won U.S. regulatory clearance to market the first birth control pill designed to cut the number of a woman's menstrual cycles to four a year from 13. The company said the extended-cycle pill, called Seasonale, will be available by prescription at the end of October.
Women will take Seasonale tablets for up to 84 consecutive days, followed by a seven-day placebo interval. Most oral contraceptives currently sold in the United States are based on a regimen of 21 treatment days followed by seven days of placebo.
The placebo cycles allow for periods of bleeding, so most women on oral contraceptives have about 13 menstrual cycles each year that cleanse the linings of their wombs.
"It's fantastic that women are going to have a choice about when and if they want to have periods," said Dr. Anita Nelson, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UCLA.
Clinical trials of Seasonale found that it prevented pregnancy and was as safe as traditional birth control pills. The most common side effects were colds, headache and intramenstrual bleeding or spotting.
"Many women suffer significantly while they have their periods. If you can use the pills to take away periods entirely for three months or so at a time, that can make a huge contribution to women's health, to their quality of life and to their productivity," Nelson said.
Click here for complete story:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=594&ncid=594&e=1&u=/nm/20030905/hl_nm/health_barr_dc
And here's additional evidence that using the hormone patch (and similarly the vaginal ring) is safer for your health than taking hormones by pill.
Estrogen Patch May Be Safer Than Pill Form
Fri Sep 26, 5:21 PM ET
By Megan Rauscher
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - For women who need estrogen replacement to deal with severe symptoms of menopause, a patch may be better than taking pills. Oral estrogen replacement therapy (ERT) is known to raise the risk of blood clots forming in veins, a.k.a. venous thrombosis. However, through-the-skin delivery of ERT doesn't have this effect, according to a study conducted in France.
Oral but not transdermal ERT significantly altered the effect of a blood compound known as activated protein C on the regulation of a clotting factor, thrombin, the team reports in the American Heart Association's journal Arteriosclerosis Thrombosis and Vascular Biology.
Moreover, after six months, markers of blood coagulation activity were significantly higher in the oral estrogen arm than in the transdermal or placebo arms of the trial.
SOURCE: Arteriosclerosis Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, September 2003.
SOURCE: Arteriosclerosis Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, September 2003.
Click here for complete story:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=594&ncid=594&e=8&u=/nm/20030926/hl_nm/estrogen_patch_dcThe above is not meant to be medical advice. Please read the attached Disclaimer, Etc.
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