Is NuvaRing Dangerous?

[babylonsister]

Is NuvaRing Dangerous?
The FDA says Schering-Plough's hip, new contraceptive is safe. More than 100 lawsuits say otherwise.
—By Stephanie Mencimer

May/June 2009


One minute, 32-year-old Jackie Bozicev was headed for the shower. The next, the New Jersey mother of two lay on her bathroom floor, gasping for help. It was a weekday morning in December 2007, and her husband, Rob, 35, was downstairs cooking breakfast. The couple's two-year-old son, who'd come up to complain that Dad would only dish him out one waffle, saw his mother fall to the floor and go into a seizure. Rushing upstairs, Rob found his wife turning blue.

He called 911 as his seven-month-old daughter cried in her crib nearby. Struggling for calm, he tried to coax his son into another room while fielding questions from the operator: "Does she have food allergies? Is she breathing? Do you know how to do cpr?" Rob pumped her chest. Her breathing resumed. When the emts arrived, they asked more questions, but no one seemed to know what ailed Jackie. Before the ambulance pulled away, Rob saw the medics intubating his wife, a bad sign. By the time he reached the hospital, she was dead.

When an autopsy later revealed that Jackie had died of a blood clot that had migrated from her pelvic area to her lungs, Rob was bewildered. His wife was perfectly healthy. She didn't smoke, nor did she have any history of clots. The doctors had no answers, so Rob googled his way to what he now believes is the likely culprit: NuvaRing, a flexible plastic contraceptive device that, when inserted vaginally, releases hormones for about three weeks.

A mother dying in front of her toddler? That's hardly the message of NuvaRing's sassy marketing, which is all about liberation from the drudgery of daily birth control. Manufacturer Organon—bought in 2007 by Schering-Plough, which is now merging with Merck—promotes the first-of-its-kind contraceptive with magazine ads proclaiming, "Let Freedom Ring." Its ubiquitous TV spot, a play on Busby Berkeley musicals, features synchronized swimmers posing as birth control pills. "Maybe it's time to break free from the pack," the voice-over suggests as the women abandon their repetitive routine.

The company also relies on Facebook ads and a girlfriend-to-girlfriend approach to overcome squeamishness about inserting the ring. It has even bought product placements on Scrubs and other shows. More than a million American women have responded; Jackie started using the ring in May 2007, about a month after the birth of her second child, when her sister raved about its convenience.

Making birth control easier is, of course, a good thing. But for years there have been serious safety questions about the "third generation" hormones used in NuvaRing and several other contraceptives on the market—questions that NuvaRing's labeling sidesteps by saying that it is "unknown" how the device compares to other hormonal birth control. "Jackie had no indication that this was any more dangerous than any other contraceptive," says Carmen Scott, a lawyer representing the family in a civil suit against the drugmaker.

more...

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2009/05/nuvaring-dangerous

[kestrel91316]

1. I'm sure the anti-pharmaceuticals crowd will be shrieking for this

to be yanked off the market now.......

Some people won't be happy until we have nothing left in the medicine cabinet but "Chinese herbs".

[MADem]

3. I'm not "anti-pharmaceutical" at all. Some drugs do a great job--like the ones

they give people who hear voices and want to kill their grandma, for example.

What I object to is truncated testing to get a product to market quickly. We've seen way too much of that lately.

[MADem]

2. Gee, jazzy yellow swimsuits, and death. What more could a career gal want?

Do I need to haul this out?

:sarcasm:

[niyad]

4. anyone here old enough to remember the dalkon shield? I had one of those,

didn't appear to have any problems--until I miscarried two days before graduation. the shield was pulled off the market just a short time after that-- a fact that my gynecologist failed to mention to me.

I was lucky--it didn't kill me, didn't screw up my health, as it did so many others. it was several years before I learned the truth about the "safety" of that little device, and how we were all lied to.

apparently, that hasn't changed.

[Liberal Veteran]

5. Well, the Dalkon shield was an IUD....Nuvaring is not.

Nuvaring is basically a polymer ring which release the same kind of hormones that birth control pills contain. It is an intravaginal device (as opposed to intrauterine like the Dalkon shield) which is inserted into the vagina and left for three weeks, then removed for a week and a new ring is inserted. The vaginal mucosa absorbs the hormones released by the ring.

[supernova]

6. Clots are a well known side-effect of hormonal BC

It's rare, but it does happen, especially if you smoke.

That is would it have happened had she been on the pill too? We'll never know.

That poor woman.

[LeftyMom]

7. Blood clots are a known side effect of ANY hormonal birth control.

There's no reason I've heard to think that the Nuvaring causes more than oral contraceptives. If anything, it may be the reverse due to the lower, localized dose.

I used it for years with no problems, but on medical advice I went off of it because of a family history of blood clots of unknown origin.