The first nonhormonal drug to treat hot flashes won approval from the Food and Drug Administration on Friday, offering a new alternative to menopausal women.
Tag: hot flashes
Conventional Wisdom on Hot Flashes, Menopause Questioned
Doctors and researchers may reconsider some of what they know about hot flashes and menopause.Researchers at the University of Washington found that more than half of the women they surveyed started having hot flashes and night sweats before menopause.
Depomed Fails to Win U.S. Approval for Menopause Drug
Depomed Inc. (DEPO) failed to win U.S. approval for a drug to ease hot flashes associated with menopause that regulatory advisers had said was too risky to clear for sale.
Hot Flashes and Hormones: A Complex Issue
When night sweats, hot flashes and other signs of menopause come to call, many women find themselves desperate to soothe their symptoms. For some, the search for relief will lead them to consider bioidentical hormone therapy, a treatment that has been popularized by such celebrities as Suzanne Somers and Oprah Winfrey. Proponents say bioidentical hormones are natural, effective and safe, but is that true?
Chinese Herbs May Reduce Hot Flashes
Women taking a Chinese herbal formula experienced less than half the number of menopausal hot flashes they had before the treatment, according to a new study from Hong Kong
FDA Panel Rejects Depomed Menopause Treatment
Shares of Depomed slid Friday after a panel of advisers to the Food and Drug Administration overwhelmingly voted against its drug to treat hot flashes and other symptoms of menopause.
Why do women get hot flashes during menopause?
Hot flushes affect millions of people, and not just women. Yet, it is still unclear what causes the episodes of temperature discomfort, often accompanied by profuse sweating.
Now a team of researchers around Dr. Naomi Rance, a professor in the department of pathology at the UA College of Medicine, has come closer to understanding the mechanism of hot flushes, a necessary step for potential treatment options down the road. This research was published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The team identified a group of brain cells known as KNDy neurons as a likely control switch of hot flushes. KNDy neurons (pronounced “candy”) are located in the hypothalamus, a portion of the brain controlling vital functions that also serves as the switchboard between the central nervous system and hormone signals.
“Although the KNDy neurons are a very small population of cells, our research reveals that they play extremely important roles in how the body controls its energy resources, reproduction and temperature,” said Melinda Mittelman-Smith, who led the study as part of her doctoral thesis. “They are true multitaskers.”
By studying KNDy neurons in rats, the research team created an animal model of menopause to elucidate the biological mechanisms of temperature control in response to withdrawal of the hormone estrogen, the main trigger of the changes that go along with menopause. Read full article.
Get Rid of Hot Flashes with Relaxation
That’s the word from researchers at Baylor University’s Mind-Body Medicine Research Laboratory.
Relaxing — specifically, hypnotic relaxation therapy — reduced hot flashes in post-menopausal women by as much as 80 percent, researchers there have found. And it worked in a matter of weeks.
Besides that, women who used the relaxation therapy felt less anxious and depressed and said their quality of life was better.
Therapists provided the 187 women in the study with weekly hypnosis sessions. But participants also practiced self-hypnosis during the five-week study, according to an article published online Oct. 22 in Menopause: The Journal of The North American Menopause Society. Read full article.
Soy: No effect on menopausal hot flashes
(Medical Xpress)—A team of investigators led by UC Davis found that eating soy products such as soy milk and tofu did not prevent the onset of hot flashes and night sweats as women entered menopause.
Unlike previous studies investigating the relationship between soy and these menopausal symptoms, the current study included a very large population over a long period of time: more than 1,600 women over 10 years. The article, titled “Phytoestrogen and Fiber Intakes in Relation to Incident Vasomotor Symptoms: Results from the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation,” was published online today in Menopause: The Journal of The North American Menopause Society and will appear in the March 2013 print issue of the journal. Read full article.
Menopausal women could ‘work out’ their hot flashes
Menopausal women who exercise may experience fewer hot flashes in the 24 hours following physical activity, according to health researchers.
In general, women who are relatively inactive or are overweight or obese tend to have a risk of increased symptoms of perceived hot flashes, noted Steriani Elavsky, assistant professor of kinesiology at Penn State.
Perceived hot flashes do not always correspond to actual hot flashes. Most previous research analyzed only self-reported hot flashes. This is the first study known to the researchers to look at objective versus subjective hot flashes.
Elavsky and colleagues studied 92 menopausal women for 15 days. The women recruited for this study were different from many earlier menopause studies, said Elavsky. In the past, women in menopause studies were experiencing severe symptoms and seeking help. They were probably not representative of the general population.