Dr. Anick Berard, at the University of Montreal in Quebec, said medications such as those which treat severe acne, anxiety and psychiatric drugs, antibiotics, and many drugs prescribed for heart disease and medical conditions “can and should be avoided” by women who are pregnant.
The disorder is a branch of “female sexual dysfunction,” a widely debated term that involves everything from an inability to reach orgasm to a lack of desire. Described as a “Viagra-like drug for women” by one of the drug trials’ principal investigators, the former antidepressant flibanserin is prompting an outcry from critics who say female sexual dysfunction is a disorder the pharmaceutical industry has conjured as an attempt to capitalize on women’s complex sexuality.
Flibanserin failed its trials as an anti-depressant, but when its maker, Boehringer, asked test subjects to return the unused portion, patients were reluctant. Boehringer funded a study at the University of North Carolina, which now reports that Flibanserin increases a woman’s sex drive. A lot of the media is touting this as “female Viagra,” but it’s really no such thing.
Bernard Carroll, former head of psychiatry at Duke University and once Charles Nemeroff’s boss, said parts of Nemeroff’s work involved Paxil, a GlaxoSmithKline antidepressant. “Basically, he was doing basic science pimping for Paxil to produce talking points,” Carroll told The Herald in an e-mail Thursday. “All he ever produced was speculation but that was enough to satisfy Glaxo marketing. . . . I have been exposing his shenanigans for some years.”
A judge has mandated Glaxo provide emails between it and researchers who were looking into the Paxil-birth defect connection. U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner in Boston ruled “the plaintiffs are entitled to correspondence and documents between anyone at Slone and GSK about the study, its scope” and methodology.