Hundreds of women in the US sued pharmaceutical gigantic pfizer about claiming that the popular injection of the birth traction has left them with ‘life -changing’ brain tumors.
Every year, around 2 million women are prescribed the contraception, called Depo-Provera, for which many feel attracted to his convenience.
It is only injected into the arm or buttocks once every three months and delivers a synthetic hormone that prevents pregnancies and removes the need for daily pills or invasive treatments.
But research suggests that the shot comes with a more than 500 percent increased risk of developing brain tumors that can lead to frightening blindness, epileptic seizures and memory loss, even years after users stop taking medication.
Andrea Faulks, from Alabama, began to take Depo-Provera in 1993 after side effects of her birth control pill. Within a few weeks she developed serious headaches, lost her hair in chunks and packed at 20 pounds.
Faulks stopped taking the shot in 1995, at the age of 26, and swore completely contraception. But in the next three decades she was taken to the hospital several times with unbearable headaches, dizziness and vibrations in her hand.
“I knew something was wrong,” Faulks, now 55, told the Daily Mail.
Last summer, an MRI revealed, after he had been fired by six doctors, that Faulks had an meningioma, a slowly growing tumor that forms in the brain and the spinal cord.
Andrea Faulks, a 55-year-old from Alabama, is one of the nearly 400 women who suggest Pfizer about claiming her Depo-Provera contraception gave her a brain tumor
Depo-Provera is injected into the arm or buttocks every three months. An estimated 2 to 3 million regulations for the birth control drug are filled every year in the US
Faulks is now undergoing radiation to try to reduce the tumor. If that fails, she might need a risky operation to remove it.
She is one of the nearly 400 women in the US who suits Pfizer because they do not adequately inform doctors and patients about the potential risks of the medication.
The drug has a warning label about the risk of bone loss, but not for meningiomas.
The Daily Mail has contacted Pfizer for comment.
Depo-Provera contains progestin, a synthetic version of the hormone progesterone, which prevents pregnancy by stopping ovulation and diluting the uterus lining. This makes it difficult for an egg to implant itself.
Experts believe that progestine stimulates receptors in the meninges, where meningiomas grow. This can cause cells to mutate and form tumors.
“If there are women who are exposed to this medicine and then the diagnosis were established the meningioma, they should certainly talk to a lawyer,” said lawyer Chris Paulos of the Levin Papantonio law firm in Florida, who has filed a Class-Action right case against Pfizer.
Experts estimate that 2 to 3 million Depo-Provera recipes are filled in every year in the US. The UK fills around 10,000 of these recipes annually.
Meniomas grow in the meninges, the membranes around the brain and the spinal cord, and hit 170,000 Americans every year.
Nine out of 10 of his benign, which means that they are not cancer. However, they can still lead to frightening side effects such as blindness and attacks.
The tumors grow slowly, so symptoms such as face changes, headache, memory loss and coordination problems can take years or even decades to be linked.
This was the case for Sherry Brown, from Louisiana, who started taking Depo-Provera in 2001.
Just like Faulsks, she was attracted by the shot for convenience compared to the pills she took earlier. However, she stopped taking the shot in 2003 because of weight gain and remained from other contraception to undergoing a hysterectomy in 2004 when she was 27.
Brown didn’t think about her time on Depo-Provera until she randomly fainted in 2019 and hit her head.
Doctors discovered an meningioma in her brain, although they decided not to start treatments because of the small size.
Two years later, in 2021, Brown lost her smell. She also regularly suffered memory reductions and took a few minutes to remember the routines she had spent for years with perfecting.
Scans revealed a second meningiom.
Sherry Brown, from Louisiana, was diagnosed with two meningiomas almost two decades after taking Depo-Provera. If her treatments are not successful, she needs brain surgery
Lucy Woodhouse, a UK nurse, was also diagnosed with an meningioma and believes that Depo-Provera has caused it possible
Although the newer tumor was too small for doctors to take the risk of running, her primary tumor had grown to around 1.5 inches, about the size of a silver dollar point.
Earlier this year, at the age of 47, Brown underwent a gamma -mesh procedure that uses radiation to stop tumor growth without making incisions.
She will have scans later this year to see if the procedure did not prevent primary meningioma from growing. If it is not successful, she will probably have to undergo brain surgery to remove one or both tumors.
‘It is a constant fear and thought in the back of my mind: will the tumors grow? Will one of them grow? “Said Brown.
Faulks will also be forced to undergo invasive surgery if her radiation does not reduce her meningioma. “My next would be an operation,” she said. “I pray that that’s not the thing.”
Lucy Woodhouse, a UK nurse, was also diagnosed with an meningioma and believes that Depo-Provera has caused it possible.
She had experienced severe headaches that felt like hangovers and struggling to read aloud before tests revealed that she had a tumor the size of a golf ball.
Paulos, whose law firm Faulks and Brown represents, said the Daily Mail that nearly 400 lawsuits had been filed to date from women who developed an meningioma after taking Depo-Provera.
However, he expects thousands of similar lawsuits to be filed in the coming years.
“It is certainly a risk that was easily known, if not known by the manufacturers decades and decades ago,” he claimed.
Paulos pointed to one study Last year published that more than 18,000 women compared the meningioma operation with healthy control persons.
The study showed that long-term use of Depo-Provera was associated with a 5.6-time increased risk of meningioma for 12 months.
Referring to the study, Paulos also noted that the injecting of Depo-Provera into the muscles instead of the skin ensures that the synthetic hormone of the drug is absorbed faster by the body.
Faulks is seen here who ring a bell after completing the radiation treatment for her meningiom. She is now waiting to see if she needs surgery to remove the tumor
He said ‘the best public evidence’ of Depo-Provera that leads to meningioma is a 2015 label change in Canada.
That year, the Canadian health authorities have added a warning label to the drug about the risk of meningioma.
“To this day, the American label does not contain the same language as the Canadian label,” Paulos told The Daily Mail. ‘And even if so, I think the Canadian label would be insufficient in terms of announcing the risk that the medicine is.
“And so we have a pretty Egregious labeling problem where this type of tumor is not even called special, let alone, let alone a fair disclosure of the increased risk of that tumor to the patient when they decide with their doctor to use this product or not.”
Lawyers who work on the lawsuit said that they ‘understand’ that Pfizer talked to the FDA about updating the drug label.
‘I would be shocked if we see no label change in the near future, “said Paulos.
Faulks told The Daily Mail that meningioma has “changed my entire life,” which leads to constant fatigue that it has made it difficult for her to drive.
It also struggles with balance problems and headaches.
“I know this is something I have to live with for the rest of my life, as long as I live,” she said.
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