Lybrel receives FDA approval

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New birth control produced by Wyeth received FDA approval yesterday:

Article

It's said the drug would be on the market in mid-July. This drug can be taken year round and ends menstruation. This drug essentially ends a normal body function of females.
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Easily the best thing to happen to men after the creation of women!


All jokes aside, even though their studies were good enough to get this drug to market, I don't like the drug. There's just something about it that worries me when you are talking about shutting down the natural cycle forever (or at least until you get off the pill)
 
Caverject said:
Easily the best thing to happen to men after the creation of women!


All jokes aside, even though their studies were good enough to get this drug to market, I don't like the drug. There's just something about it that worries me when you are talking about shutting down the natural cycle forever (or at least until you get off the pill)
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I agree and as a woman I wouldn't trust it...at least not anytime soon.
 
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It will be interesting to see how many women do trust it and much Lybrel is actually dispensed.
 
I'm not a woman, but a female friend of mine talked my ear off about this subject even before lybrel came out. She has been taking birth control continuously for about 15 years now, skipping the placebos. She has had no menstrual cycles in that time.
She also told me that the original creator of the pill intended for it to be taken all the time. . .thus avoiding menstruation. However [and this is where I'm taking her word] due to pressure from the Catholic Church he included placebos. Apparently this guy was a Catholic.
My friend also told me that the amount of menstruation a woman goes through in a lifetime is astronomically higher than it had been pre-birth control -- i.e. women were more often pregnant.
So in her view, a reduction in the number of menstrual cycles is gravitating more toward the biological norm for women.
 
Great article, thanks for posting it.
 
A very long, but interesting read. I'd like to see the original research from Japan. It'd be good to see the numbers.
 
this is the dumbest drug ever. as much as we women hate periods, we LOVE them every month b/c it's a sign that we're not pregnant and that's a HUGE sigh of relief. pretty much, there's no reason for females to menstruate other than to know that they're not pregnant (which is important to know in case there is an accidental pregnancy, in which case the BC should be DC'd ASAP--can you imagine taking the pill into your 4th month when your belly tells you that you're pregnant? no drug is "safe" in pregnancy when it comes to a precious life b/c there just hasn't been enough studies).
 
Its really called Lybrel? As in liberal? As in... I look forward to the ad campaigns.
 
gaba101 said:
this is the dumbest drug ever. as much as we women hate periods, we LOVE them every month b/c it's a sign that we're not pregnant and that's a HUGE sigh of relief. pretty much, there's no reason for females to menstruate other than to know that they're not pregnant (which is important to know in case there is an accidental pregnancy, in which case the BC should be DC'd ASAP--can you imagine taking the pill into your 4th month when your belly tells you that you're pregnant? no drug is "safe" in pregnancy when it comes to a precious life b/c there just hasn't been enough studies).
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My girlfriend does not LOVE her period, she hates it. She was asking me about lybrel today because she saw it in the NY times. So i don't really think you are speaking for all the women in the world. and insulin/synthroid is safe in pregnancy and xopenex is the dumbest drug ever.
 
npage148 said:
My girlfriend does not LOVE her period, she hates it. She was asking me about lybrel today because she saw it in the NY times. So i don't really think you are speaking for all the women in the world. and insulin/synthroid is safe in pregnancy and xopenex is the dumbest drug ever.
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beleive me, i absoultely hate my periods with a vengeance. but for women who are on the go, really busy w/ school, work, and everyting else in her life where a pregnancy at this particular moment in time would not be the best time, a period provides reassurance that it's another month that she's not pregnant.i'd rather not worry whether or not i am pregnant if i missed my period (stress could cause you to miss a month out of hte blue)
 
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gaba101 said:
beleive me, i absoultely hate my periods with a vengeance. but for women who are on the go, really busy w/ school, work, and everyting else in her life where a pregnancy at this particular moment in time would not be the best time, a period provides reassurance that it's another month that she's not pregnant.i'd rather not worry whether or not i am pregnant if i missed my period (stress could cause you to miss a month out of hte blue)
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That's a really good and interesting point. Personally i don't mind my period. I only have one for 3 days and I've been on my pill for 9 years because I had horrible, excruciating problems when I was 16. Now it's no big deal and like gaba says it reminds me that I'm not pregnant. I think it just depends on the person and how bad the symptoms are. Something that the guys might not understand is that hormones can cause other side effects. I was listening on the radio and they were talking about how this pill will completely save them, no more bitchy moods from their girlfriends and what not. The actually period isn't what causes that! One possible side effect of birth control pills is mood swings, sometimes the pill can decrease them and sometimes it can make them worse. Also many women lose their sex drive when they're on the pill. The pill is great for those women that can tolerate it (and most can) but for some it's just awful. I'm happy with the one I'm on and wouldn't want to change it and mess with my hormones like that. I have a feeling that many women who are stable on one pill won't rush to switch to this one. Just like many didn't jump to seasonale, especially considering the costs of these new pills.
 
gaba101 said:
beleive me, i absoultely hate my periods with a vengeance. but for women who are on the go, really busy w/ school, work, and everyting else in her life where a pregnancy at this particular moment in time would not be the best time, a period provides reassurance that it's another month that she's not pregnant.i'd rather not worry whether or not i am pregnant if i missed my period (stress could cause you to miss a month out of hte blue)
Click to expand...

I have to agree with you on this one. I think I'd rather die than become pregnant right now. I also use my period as an indication of whether I'm pregnant. It may not be 100% accurate (I've had a couple people tell me--but haven't done any research on it-- that you can still get your period if you become pregnant; but I just don't know how anything can survive in there when I get my period--won't go into details), but I'd rather have some indication other than my stomach getting really big 6 months into the term. I would think that's the only way I'd really know if I was on Lybrel. I get bloated a lot all the time, and I often think, "gosh, I look like I'm 3 months pregnant", so I wouldn't be able to tell that way. I also get sick in the morning every now and then, get strange cravings for food, and get hot and cold flashes a lot. I get asked a lot if I'm pregnant already. And by the time I can actually really tell, like after 6 months, it would be too late to do anything about it. I'd probably kill myself. And I'd be a nervous wreck wondering if I'm pregnant all the time. So, yeah, there's no way I'm going on Lybrel unless I get my tubes tied and my finance has a vasectomy. It has to be both; yes, I'm that paranoid.
 
It's a love hate relationship with periods. I love knowing the pregnancy status (or lack thereof - wooo) yet I hate it because well, it's a period. I think Lybrel is great for women who aren't sexually active and just take the pill for cramps or for other reasons. Personally, I'd be scared to death not knowing if there was a little bun in the oven. Especially while in pharmacy school, sheesh.
 
It might be mentioned in the link (not sure if I read the same one); a major, MAJOR side effect of Lybrel was spotting. As in, bleeding out your hoo-ha despite "not" menstruating.

Looks like for some women, at least, they're going to get rid of that tissue no matter what their hormones say. Which gives me great pause to the safety of this whole idea.

I don't think any woman likes Aunt Flo, but the problem for most, including me, is not the bleeding itself. It's the hormones. It's the cramps from hell, and for me on top of that, the nausea and hot flashes. I basically feel like I have the flu every 20ish days.

Here's a brilliant idea: give women drugs to lessen the symptoms of PMS, not just outright stop menstruation. I mean, for ****'s sake, as long as I get some vicoprofen I'm fine. Prozac is approved for PMDD. Got stuff for migraines too if you get them.

I refuse to take hormonal birth control because of the side effects, and this one sounds like it's just going too far.
 
eeyore spice said:
It might be mentioned in the link (not sure if I read the same one); a major, MAJOR side effect of Lybrel was spotting. As in, bleeding out your hoo-ha despite "not" menstruating.

Looks like for some women, at least, they're going to get rid of that tissue no matter what their hormones say.
Click to expand...


you cannot generalize that oh just b/c the women spotted that it meant regardless of therapeutic intervention, tissue will try to come out nevertheless. Your entire menstrual cycle is very carefully regulated and hence, one must take such therapeutic interventions carefully timewise. You don't know how compliant these women in the study were about taking their pill every day at the exact same time (probably why spotting has been observed in other OC studies as well). They could have been habitually off by say 30 minutes in terms of when they were taking their pill. In this finely tuned menstrual cycle, what could have happened to theirs was that perhaps they didn't take their pill exactly on time in the study and their FSH and LH levels were not suppressed fully by the Estrogen and Progesterone found in the birth control pills such that their FSH and LH levels (in particular LH levels) reached/exceeded the treshold to trigger ovulation (as you recall from your pharmacy classes, an estrogen peak occuring around day 12/13 specifically will trigger an LH surge, which is the critical stimulus for ovulation. And w/o pregnancy, the corpus luteum dies by around day 25ish, causing declining levels of estrogen and inhibinA and progesterone, which activates the prostaglandin to cause endometrial ischemia, which leads to some bleeding). Whew, that was a mouthful.

Bottom line--many of the lecturers in classes I have taken on this subject are experts in this field and they all say menstruation is not necessary (i.e. they don't believe tissue needs to be gotten rid of every now and then, whether it be monthly or annually).
 
I've been taking the pills straight through (no placebo) since HS. The gyno I went to back then not a single woman in the office took the placebo more often than every 6months. that was an office within a university hospital. to be honest I don't plan when to take a break it just tends to happen when I don't get to the pharmacy in time and if it's more than 4 days (wednesday) then I just let it go until the next sunday.

I have to say that I'm just not that worried about getting pregnant - I've always been super accurate with the timing of my pills and when I was younger I'd do a home preg test every 2-3 months just in case. I take it more for the decreased cramps/steady-state hormones than anything else. I am truly vile when my own natural hormones are allowed to take their own course.
 
all this talk about tissues, ick!:eek:

alls i gotta say is...i like my period...
i like knowing that i'm not breeding, because having kids is something that we simply DON'T want...
and,ew, not to continue with gross...but i think that what's meant to come out, should come out!
:eek:
 
tussionex said:
all this talk about tissues, ick!:eek:

alls i gotta say is...i like my period...
i like knowing that i'm not breeding, because having kids is something that we simply DON'T want...
and,ew, not to continue with gross...but i think that what's meant to come out, should come out!
:eek:
Click to expand...

Think of it like menstrual constipation.
 
but if you're taking a combination progesterone/estrogen pill aren't you also not building up what's "meant to come out"? because even if you choose to have your period on some pills it is practically non existant on a monthly basis. it's not like if one goes 6 months without it she have 2 weeks of ridiculous unstoppableness. it's going to be lighter than it would've been after 3 weeks of no pill.

and that is a Very Good Thing.
 
I have endometriosis so everytime I have a period, the entrometriosis gets worse. When I was 15, my OB put me on continuous BC which I was on for 13 years. I went off the pill to get pregnant and was knocked up 2 months later. I developed a blood clot during pregnancy due to a clotting disorder I didn't know I had so now I am unfortunately banned from estrogen. Otherwise I would be right back on it!

I can understand why people might think it's "unnatural" to not have a period but I have read studies that suggest the increase in breast and ovarian cancers could be linked to the rise in number of menstral cycles. In earlier times, women had less cycles because they had more pregnancies. So maybe supressing your period isn't as "unnatural" as you think! :)
 
pharmacyanalyst said:
I have endometriosis so everytime I have a period, the entrometriosis gets worse. When I was 15, my OB put me on continuous BC which I was on for 13 years. I went off the pill to get pregnant and was knocked up 2 months later. I developed a blood clot during pregnancy due to a clotting disorder I didn't know I had so now I am unfortunately banned from estrogen. Otherwise I would be right back on it!

I can understand why people might think it's "unnatural" to not have a period but I have read studies that suggest the increase in breast and ovarian cancers could be linked to the rise in number of menstral cycles. In earlier times, women had less cycles because they had more pregnancies. So maybe supressing your period isn't as "unnatural" as you think! :)
Click to expand...

you are indeed correct. That was one of my main reasons for switching back to the pill from the continuous patch--I did not want a continuous release of estrogen (not just continuous but bypassing 1st pass metabolism).
 
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