Tag: health risks

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Could Fertility Drugs Make Kids Shorter?

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SATURDAY, June 23 (HealthDay News) — For those who need help getting pregnant, the thought of having a child who’s a little shorter than other kids probably won’t be much of a worry. But the question of whether infertility treatment causes unanticipated consequences remains fertile ground for researchers.

In a study scheduled for presentation Saturday at the Endocrine Society annual meeting in Houston, researchers found full-term children conceived with fertility drugs were about one inch shorter than their peers.

The researchers wanted to find out whether there was a difference in height among children whose mothers used only ovarian stimulation by fertility drugs such as Clomid (clomiphene) without in-vitro fertilization (IVF).

Children conceived with the help of ovarian stimulation alone account for about 5 percent of all births in the developed world, according to the researchers.

Previous studies have suggested that children conceived by IVF may be taller than naturally conceived kids. The researchers wanted to know if something in the process of IVF, which includes fertilization and culture of embryos in a laboratory dish, could affect stature. So they studied children conceived without IVF, but with the assistance of fertility drugs that cause ovulation.

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No link seen between contraceptives and higher HIV risk-CDC

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ATLANTA, June 21 (Reuters) – There is no clear link between the use of contraceptives such as the birth control pill or injections such as Depo-Provera and an increased risk that a woman will contract HIV, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday.

But the CDC also said it was “strongly” encouraging the use of condoms as a precaution against the virus that causes AIDS.

Recent studies have suggested that the use of hormonal contraceptives could increase the risk of women contracting HIV. But after reviewing the studies, the Atlanta-based CDC said, “the evidence does not suggest” a link between oral contraceptives such as the birth control pill and increased HIV risk.

For injectable forms of birth control the evidence is inconclusive, but in the absence of more definitive research it too is considered safe, CDC officials said.

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Pfizer Paid $896 Million in Prempro Settlements

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Pfizer Inc. (PFE), the world’s largest drugmaker, said in a securities filing that it has paid $896 million to resolve about 60 percent of the cases alleging its menopause drugs caused cancer in women.

Pfizer has now settled about 6,000 lawsuits that claim Prempro and other hormone-replacement drugs caused breast cancer, and it has set aside an additional $330 million to resolve the remaining 4,000 suits, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The reserve means New York-based Pfizer has committed more than $1.2 billion to resolving claims that its Wyeth and Pharmacia & Upjohn units failed to properly warn women about the menopause drugs’ health risk. Based on the May 10 filing, the company is paying an average of about $150,000 a case.

“It’s good for the company not to let this litigation linger,” Les Funtleyder, a New York-based fund manager at Miller Tabak & Co. in New York who holds Pfizer shares, said yesterday in a phone interview. “Resolving these cases gives investors one less thing to worry about.”
More than 6 million women took Prempro and related menopause drugs to treat symptoms including hot flashes and mood swings before a 2002 study highlighted their links to cancer. Wyeth’s sales of the medicines, which are still on the market, exceeded $2 billion before the release of the Women’s Health Initiative, a study sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.

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Birth Control Tied To Heart Attack And Stroke, But Risks Very Small, Study Says

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A sweeping new Danish study concludes that hormonal contraception increases the risk of heart attack and stroke, but the overall risk for individual women is very low.

“The amount of attention paid to these minuscule risks, and what are likely to be very small differences in vascular risk, detracts attention from more salient issues, like preventing unwanted pregnancy,” argued Dr. Diana B. Petitti, a professor of biomedical informatics at Arizona State University. Petitti wrote an editorial accompanying the findings, which were published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday.

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Early Menopause May Raise Risk for Brain Aneurysm

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(HealthDay News) — Early menopause may be associated with an increased risk of brain aneurysm, new research suggests.

The study by researchers from Rush University Medical Center in Chicago included 76 postmenopausal women who had a brain aneurysm, or an abnormal bulging of an artery in the brain. Aneurysms are serious. If the bulge leaks or ruptures, it can lead to stroke or death.

About 26 percent of the women who had an aneurysm experienced menopause by age 40, compared with about 19 percent in a comparison group of women who didn’t have an aneurysm.

Every four-year increase in the age at which a woman went through menopause was associated with a 21 percent decreased risk of aneurysm.

The study was published online June 11 in the Journal of NeuroInterventional Surgery.

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