A newly-published study suggests a tantalizing, and fascinating, connection -- between receiving the Pfizer birth control shot, and bone density loss -- even in quite young women. Nearly half of the women on the shot had a five percent (or greater) bone loss, over two years. [Aside: The shot had previously been shown to be associated with non-trivial weight gain -- so as one adds mass, one loses bone-density? Yikes!]
Pfizer, the maker of "the shot" has been -- with its own osteoporosis drug candidate -- on hold with FDA since late 2008, but I wonder if the deal here is that as pharma loses the women of child-bearing age demographic, over time, it builds the osetoporosis menopausal womens' demographic. [I stated that in a provocative fashion, for effect. See the 1,000 cases of pending Fosamax products-liability litigation.]
In fact, I think it just more proof of the adage that we don't really know very much -- about the longer-range effects of many of the more common drugs sold to us, here in the United States.
Per The New York Times -- do go read it all:
. . . .A study that followed women who used the birth-control method — a shot of depot medroxyprogesterone acetate, better known as DMPA or Depo-Provera, every three months — found that 45 percent of the users experienced bone mineral density losses of 5 percent or more in the hip or lower spine, researchers said. The study appears in the January issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology. . . .
More than two million American women use DMPA, including about 400,000 teenagers. . . .
What we don't know is clearly a vast uncharted and deep blue ocean, out there.
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