The birth control patch Ortho Evra may not be as safe as once thought. The pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson may have known the birth control patch Ortho Evra carried a serious risk of personal injury before its release.
Ortho Evra was released in 2002 with great success and fanfare. However, the cause for celebration may need to be put on hold. In comparison to the conventional birth control pill, the Ortho Evra patch is 18 times more likely to cause blood clots and 12 times more likely to cause strokes. This information is based on patient reports from 2002 to 2004. One of the key issues with the Ortho Evra patch is the amount of estrogen that women receive.
In comparison to the pill, the Ortho Evra patch delivers a high level and continuous amount of estrogen to a woman's body. Women on the Ortho Evra patch receive 60 percent more estrogen than they do on the pill. The pill delivers a singular dose that dissolves into the body whereas estrogen streams through the body for a week when a woman is on the patch.
Doctors who prescribe the Ortho Evra patch do think the risks are higher than the pill but believe the risks are relatively small. Advocates against Ortho Evra argue that not only is it riskier than the conventional pill but those who are on the patch have a higher rate of stopping their birth control use. Additionally, they believe it is no better at preventing pregnancy than the pill.
The FDA was petitioned two years ago regarding Ortho Evra but the patch is still under review. Johnson & Johnson has paid out $68 million to Ortho Evra victims and has made $1.6 billion in sales from the patch. One vice president of the company resigned in 2005 over his concern with Ortho Evra's safety evaluation regarding estrogenic exposure and fatality rates. Another vice president has sued the company for unlawful termination related to his concerns about the product's high estrogen level before it came to market.
Source: Today.msnbc.msn.com, "Did Drugmaker Hide Birth Control Patch Risks?" Jeff Rossen and Robert Powell, 9/22/10