Night Sweats – Menopause – Hot Flashes – Sleeping hot

Archive for the ‘hormone’ Category

Almost all women get at least some hot flushes and night sweats  around the menopause; they’re a by-product of the "make more oestrogen" chemical messages that our brains send out when they detect falling levels of this hormone.

Our ovaries may work intermittently for some time, so the sweats often come and go, until the brain realises that the ovaries have finally stopped working for good – this can take several years.

Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) can suppress menopausal symptoms until it’s all over. Current recommendations are to take HRT for short-term relief of menopausal symptoms. But some unlucky women do continue to have symptoms into their 60s, or even longer.

I’d recommend seeing your GP to check nothing else is going on, as there are dozens of other causes of night sweats , including an overactive thyroid, chronic infections, some drugs (for example, antidepressants) and some rare forms of cancer.

If your sweats are still due to the menopause, you could consider taking HRT even now, provided your GP thinks that it’s suitable for you, although the risks of stroke and heart attack do increase slightly as you get older.

For many businesses, 2009 has been a painful year. Not so for BodyLogicMD. The nation’s largest and fastest growing network of expert physicians specializing exclusively in medically supervised bioidentical hormones has grown the number of physicians in its network since November 2008 – from 21 to 36 physicians – and is in progress to add more physician-owned centers, including one in Puerto Rico, by the end of this year.

In the past year, BodyLogicMD has opened 13 new bioidentical hormone specialty practices around the country, currently spanning coverage in 36 cities and 18 states.

“2009 has been a year of unprecedented growth for BodyLogicMD,” said Patrick Savage, founder and president of BodyLogicMD, Inc. “We’re adding an average of 1,000 new patients each month and are opening new offices and adding doctors to existing locations as quickly as possible to meet the tremendous demand. It’s very exciting to be a part of the explosive growth in this area of preventive medicine.”

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Pfizer yesterday questioned the verdicts.

"The company believes that neither the awards of punitive damages nor the liability verdicts were supported by the evidence or the law," spokesman Chris Loder said. The company plans to challenge both decisions.

"The company stands by its belief that its subsidiaries acted responsibly," Loder said.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers say the verdicts are further proof that their cases are strong.

The verdicts show that "when jurors hear how Wyeth put huge profits over the safety of patients, they will react with a strong message of outrage," Esther Berezofsky, one of Barton’s lawyers, said in a statement.

Tom Kline, cocounsel for plaintiffs in about 40 other Prempro cases, said the punitive awards "showed that juries clearly believed that Wyeth hid the risks of breast cancer from doctors and patients, making the defense of these claims harder down the road."

There have been larger verdicts in pharmaceutical cases involving individual plaintiffs – a Texas jury awarded one plaintiff $253 million, later reduced to $26 million by an appeals court, in litigation against Merck & Co. Inc. over the arthritis drug Vioxx. But yesterday’s jury award in Philadelphia nonetheless was significant, another Center City plaintiffs’ lawyer said.

Pfizer Inc. has been hit with more than $100 million in two punitive-damage awards – one decided and the other unsealed yesterday – from Philadelphia juries.

Both cases involve Prempro, a hormone-replacement drug made by Wyeth, which recently was acquired by Pfizer. Plaintiffs said the drug was linked to their breast cancer.

The total includes $28 million awarded yesterday to Donna Kendall of Decatur, Ill.

In the second case, Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Sandra Moss yesterday unsealed a verdict reached earlier this year that awarded $75 million in punitive damages to another Illinois resident, Connie Barton, over her Prempro-linked breast cancer.

"Those are large punitive verdicts, make no mistake about it," said Howard M. Erichson, a Fordham University law professor who has studied pharmaceutical litigation.

About 1,500 of 10,000 similar cases are pending in Philadelphia, a common jurisdiction for large liability cases, attorneys say.

The juries are sending a message that they are angry about the corporate conduct in the cases, Erichson said. The $75 million likely will be reduced because it far exceeds the $3.5 million Barton received in compensatory damages, he added.

"This is a pretty good-sized punitive-damage award," said Sol Weiss, whose firm, Anapol Schwartz, tries pharmaceutical lawsuits in jurisdictions around the country. "The jury believed that the [drugmakers] were not straight with what they knew about the cancer risks."

New York-based Pfizer and lawyers for the plaintiffs even disagreed over how to count wins and losses in hormone-replacement therapy cases to date.

While plaintiffs’ lawyers point to recent verdicts in their favor, Pfizer argues that judges have set aside some decisions and plaintiffs have dropped some cases, turning the legal tide in the company’s favor.

More than six million women have taken hormone-replacement medicines to treat menopause symptoms including hot flashes, night sweats, and mood swings. Until 1995, many patients combined Premarin, Wyeth’s estrogen-based drug, with progestin-laden Provera, made by Pharmacia & Upjohn, a company also acquired by Pfizer.

Wyeth, which had not reserved funds to cover losses in the litigation, combined the two hormones in Prempro. The drugs are still on the market. Pfizer, the world’s biggest drugmaker, completed the $68 billion purchase of Wyeth on Oct. 15. Pfizer reported net income of $8.1 billion last year on sales of $48.3 billion.

Pfizer shares closed yesterday up 17 cents, or a bit less than 1 percent, at $18.53.

Annual sales of Wyeth’s hormone-replacement drugs topped $2 billion before the 2002 Women’s Health Initiative study, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, suggested that women using the medicines had a higher breast-cancer risk.

Wyeth faced its first punitive award over Prempro in January 2007, when a Philadelphia jury granted damages to Mary Daniel, an Arkansas woman who said the drug had caused her breast cancer. A judge threw out the award seven months later. The case is on appeal, and the amount of punitive damages remains under seal.

In October 2007, jurors in state court in Reno, Nev., awarded a total of $99 million in punitive damages to three women who blamed the drug for their breast cancers. That figure later was reduced to $35 million and is being appealed.

A federal jury in Arkansas awarded Donna Scroggin $27 million in bad-conduct damages against Wyeth and Upjohn over her Prempro claims. An appeals court threw out the award this year and ordered a new trial on the punitive-damage issue.

A reduced dose of synthetic oestrogen shows efficacy at relieving some of the most common symptoms of menopause within 2 or 3 weeks, according to 2 trials discussed in a poster presentation here at the 20th Annual Meeting of the North American Menopause Society (NAMS).

The findings are significant, because while the efficacy of hormone therapy is generally accepted, concerns have been common since the research of the Women’s Health Initiative demonstrated that oestrogen therapy might carry an increased risk of breast cancer, stroke, myocardial infarction, and blood clots. Therefore, shorter durations and lower doses of oestrogen may be recommended.

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Learn how to treat the symptoms of male menopause including hot flashes and episodic sweating with expert medical advice from a trained doctor and scientist in this free online health care video clip.

Expert: Dr. Susan Jewell Bio: Dr. Susan Jewell is a trained doctor and scientist in clinical research medicine, as well as a stem cell scientist in oncology and AIDS/HIV. Filmmaker: Nili Nathan

Restore Wellness Inc. introduced today its Restore Hot Flash Aid(TM), a fine mist spray that works directly on contact for the immediate relief of hot flashes and night sweats associated with menopause and perimenopause. The first of its kind, this patented formula cools instantly and reduces the feelings of heat and flushing without the use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) or the need for a prescription.

"What I like about Restore is the ability for a woman to control her own symptoms as needed, and who knows her body better than her?" said Dr. Neal Lonky, Clinical Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of California, Irvine. "With a product that is safe, without side effects, as well as convenient, this product allows her to address hot flashes at their source."

Restore Hot Flash Aid provides women with a hormone-free option to alleviate hot flashes and night sweats, the most common symptoms of menopause with proven results. Recent studies have associated HRT with an increased risk of blood clots, pulmonary embolism, and breast cancer causing women to actively seek alternatives without hormones and plant-based estrogens (phytoestrogens).

Ok.. so we are supposed to spry ourselves at night with this mister or what.. I don’t get it.

Both clinically and allergy tested, Restore Hot Flash Aid helps users to stay cool, calm and in control, a frequent complaint by women at the unexpected onset of a hot flash especially in public. In consumer trials, 93% reported relief and in clinical studies of the key marine ingredient, 90% reported cooling and refreshed skin. With the added convenience of being right at their fingertips, relief is available anytime and anywhere.

"Many women are looking for hormone-free alternatives because they either chose to avoid long- term risks or have other conditions that prevent them from using traditional hormone replacement therapies," said Rebecca Hulem, RN and certified menopause clinician. "Restore provides them with a hormone-free option that is quick, easy and affordable."

Menopause night sweats hormone-replacement therapy drug Prempro caused an Illinois woman’s invasive breast cancer and she deserves $3.7 million, a jury decided in Philadelphia, without yet deciding whether the company was at fault and should pay her.

Jurors deliberated about two hours and 15 minutes before concluding that Wyeth’s drug was a proximate cause of Connie Barton’s breast cancer. Barton, 64, was diagnosed with cancer in 2002, five years after she began taking Prempro to treat menopause symptoms like night sweats.

Jurors will hear arguments on Wyeth’s liability and possible punitive damages at a second phase of the trial starting on Oct. 1. Wyeth, which is being acquired by Pfizer Inc., has said that it faces more than 9,000 lawsuits over its menopause drugs, along with Pfizer’s Pharmacia & Upjohn unit.

The company has now lost five of eight trials over its hormone-replacement drugs since cases began reaching juries in 2006. Some of the verdicts were set aside, and others are on appeal. This is the company’s third straight loss.

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