Thyroid Cancer Support

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Forest Laboratories, maker of three medications for thyroid hormone replacement (Armour, Thyrolar and Levothroid) has again refused to comment on a critical issue regarding their medications, leaving physicians and thyroid patients without critical information.

This latest “no comment” is one in a long series of stonewalling responses from the Forest, which has been facing various allegations of wrongdoing from the FDA and authorities for several years.

On the thyroid front, Forest has consistently refused to comment about the unannounced reformulation of their natural desiccated thyroid medication Armour Thyroid that took place earlier in 2009. This reformulation caused significant health problems for a subset of patients using Armour. Even after patients and physicians discovered that the reformulation was causing significant health problems in some patients, Forest Laboratories refused to discuss it, remedy it, or comment on it publicly.

Subsquently, when Armour became unavailable this summer, Forest Laboratories refused to comment about the shortage. They referred patients and physicians to a vague statement at the website which said Armour was on backorder, with no estimated date for its return to the market.

Thyrolar, the synthetic T4/T3 combination drug produced by Forest Laboratories, has also experienced substantial shortages and backorder for several years, but disappeared from the market earlier this year. Forest Laboratories initially blamed the U. S. Pharmacopeia, claiming that new specifications for Thyrolar were forcing the company to rerformulate.

When USP officials refuted Forest, Forest then changed the story to still blame USP, but this time, claimed that new USP specifications for levothyroxine — an ingredient in Thyrolar — were to blame. Not surprisingly, this is also disingenuous, as USP again refuted Forest, revealing that Forest has had several years of advance notice in which to reformulate Thyrolar to meet the new USP guidelines, so removing the drug from the market, and leaving patients without their medication, it completely unnecessary.

Now, some patients are reporting difficulties in obtaining Levothroid, Forest’s brand of levothyroxine.

So, as a patient advocate, I thought I’d try yet again, to obtain information from Forest. Here is the latest email exchange: Read more…

What Does Forest Laboratories Have to Hide? Forest Labs Again Refuses to Comment Regarding Thyrolar and Levothroid Shortages originally appeared on About.com Thyroid Disease on Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 11:00:32.

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Today, I had an opportunity to speak with Dai Jinn, the Chief Science Officer and Chief Pharmacist at RLC Labs, maker of Nature-Throid and Westhroid.

When I’d spoken with RLC and reported in my update on Monday, November 23 Nature-Throid Natural Desiccated Thyroid: A Status Report, Dai had said that they would begin shipping 1 grain Nature-Throid this week.

As some thyroid patients have found, however, after calling the company, or checking with their pharmacies, this is not happening.

So I checked in with Dai to find out what the situation is and what thyroid patients can expect, and how thyroid patients taking natural desiccated thyroid can plan for the next several months.

First, according to Dai, the issue for RLC at present is that production levels are in flux. Production capacity depends on the supply of raw materials, and RLC is getting raw material — natural desiccated thyroid powder / Thyroid USP — from what appears to be several suppliers. While RLC will not share the names of the companies supplying their raw material, they have said that the incoming product is not necessarily consistent in terms of quality, and availability has been fluctuating.

Dai said, however, that wherever he is sourcing his natural desiccated thyroid powder, the critical issue for him and RLC is quality control. This means that not all the raw material he gets is being used to produce the RLC natural desiccated thyroid products.

But that also means that even if raw material is coming in, not all of it is being made into Nature-Throid or Westhroid.

So, when can you expect to get Nature-Throid? Read more…

Nature-Throid Natural Thyroid: A New Update on Production Status originally appeared on About.com Thyroid Disease on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 15:43:34.

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