Tag: menopause

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Drs. OZ and Roizen: Relieve menopausal symptoms

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Like the wildfires sweeping New Mexico, menopause can leave women feeling scorched and doused. Hot flashes, heart palpitations and brain fog can make daily life challenging.

Unfortunately, alarms about hormone therapy have scared many women away from a treatment that banishes symptoms. An update by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force suggests estrogen, alone or taken with progesterone, increases the risk for stroke, blood clots, and gallbladder and urinary problems. While they DO admit the recommendations don’t apply to women thinking about HT for menopausal symptoms, or those who have had a hysterectomy before age 50, they make women hesitant to take advantage of the benefits…

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Doctor’s advice: early menopause

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DR Cindy Pan sheds light on how to manage your physical and emotional health during premature menopause.

** Question: I am 38 and have been diagnosed with premature menopause. I am very distressed and wonder how this could have happened. I am struggling to cope with the physical, mental and emotional symptoms of menopause in addition to the sense of grief, loss and change in identity. Please help.

— Answer: It is understandable for a woman to feel devastated with the diagnosis of premature menopause. It is, of course, not simply symptoms of hot flushes, vaginal dryness, mood swings, irritability, dry skin, eyes and mouth, sleep disturbance and decreased sex drive that can be distressing, but also the loss of fertility that can have a massive impact.

This is particularly evident if the woman has not yet had children. That said, IVF using donor eggs is an option some women with premature menopause choose to explore.

About one per cent of women experience premature menopause, which is defined as cessation of ovulation and menstruation before 40. It can occur as early as the teens or early 20s. In most cases, the reasons for it are not known, but sometimes there may be an association with an autoimmune condition (such as hypothyroidism, Graves’ disease, Crohn’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis or lupus), a genetic condition or family history.

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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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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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Menopausal women with high oestradiol levels at greater risk of strokes

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Women are less prone to cardiovascular disease then men; but this difference between the sexes becomes less marked after the menopause. This observation is behind a great deal of received wisdom, where oestrogen is assumed to have a beneficial effect on the heart and blood vessels. Today, new data seems to question these presuppositions. A study has been conducted by a team of Inserm researchers, directed by Pierre-Yves Scarabin (Inserm Unit 1018 “Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health Research”), on 6,000 women aged over 65; its results demonstrate, for the first time, that women with high levels of oestradiol in their blood are exposed to a greater risk of myocardial infarction or strokes.

The results are published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

Oestrogen hormones play a key role in sexual development and reproduction in women. Oestradiol is the most active hormone. Its blood levels are particularly high during the active reproductive period. After the menopause, the ovarian function ceases, leading to a significant drop in oestrogen levels in the blood (the adipose tissue then becomes the main source of oestrogen). However, low concentrations of these hormones do continue to circulate and may still exert biological actions.

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Menopausal Age May Affect Rheumatoid Arthritis Severity

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Women who experience early menopause have a reduced risk of developing a severe form of rheumatoid arthritis, a new study suggests.

Researchers looked at 134 women with rheumatoid arthritis and found that those who had early menopause (before age 45) were only half as likely to develop severe arthritis as those who had normal/late menopause (16 percent versus 35 percent), and were more likely to develop mild/moderate arthritis (58 percent versus 20 percent).

The use of birth control pills or a history of breast-feeding were not associated with major differences in severity of rheumatoid arthritis, the study authors noted.

Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic autoimmune disease that’s more common in women than in men. The disorder attacks joint tissues and sometimes organs, causing swelling, inflammation, fever and fatigue. It usually develops between the ages of 30 and 60 but can occur at other ages, according to the Arthritis Foundation.

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New Study Sounds Warning on Hormone Replacement Therapy

ASRM News and Research

Women who are past menopause and healthy should not take hormone replacement therapy in hopes of warding off dementia, bone fractures or heart disease, according to a new analysis by the government task force that weighs the risks and benefits of screening and other therapies aimed at preventing illness.

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Online Tool Helps Track Menopause Symptoms

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A full 72 percent of women experiencing menopausal symptoms have not received treatment for them, according to a new survey by the Endocrine Society.  The poll, conducted in mid-April, also found that 60 percent of women exhibiting symptoms of menopause have not talked to their primary health providers about possible treatment.

The statistics prompted the Endocrine Society and its Hormone Health Network to develop a so-called Menopause Map — an interactive online quiz that helps women and their doctors discuss what treatment options (hormonal or nonhormonal) might be the most effective for them.

Menopausal women who are about to or have already stopped menstruating may also experience hot flashes, sweating, insomnia, mood swings, fatigue, depression and vaginal dryness, among others. Although the tool does not encourage women to pursue one avenue of treatment over another, it prompts women to consider a range of options to alleviate menopausal symptoms, including hormone therapy.

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Menopause Symptoms Left Untreated for Many Women

ASRM News and Research

Fewer than one third of women with menopause symptoms are receiving treatment for those symptoms, according to a nationally representative survey of 810 women aged 45 to 60 years. Lake Research Partners in Washington, DC, conducted the survey for the Endocrine Society and its Hormone Health Network from April 13 through April 17, 2012. The Endocrine Society released the results of the survey on May 1.