Tag: Effexor XR

Pristiq (desvenlafaxine) information

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Here’s a list of compiled links providing information on Pristiq. These links include info from my blog and others.

Emotional eating, Part 2

~ K ~ 4 Comments

Seeing the scale at 180 scared me into action somehow. I thought of my father who died of a heart attack and remembered that I had a history of high cholesterol running through my family. I decided I had to do something so I didn’t drop dead of a myocardial infarction at 23.

  • gymBob and I joined a gym. We went 1-2 times a week for about 30 minutes, which — for a variety of reasons — was a disaster so this consistency didn’t last long. But it helped short-term. We mostly did circuit training and about 20 minutes of cardio. We also had a
    personal trainer for a while. It’s expensive and we haven’t been able to afford one since, but it was definitely worth the money. I dropped 5 lbs.
  • I stopped drinking soda. Everyone in my family will tell you that I was ADDICTED to soda. However, I knew the carbonation made me bloated.
    • I slowly weaned myself off of regular soda, forcing myself to like the significantly inferior diet products.
    • Crystal Light On-the-GoIn due time, I tired of diet drinks and became hooked on Crystal Light On-the-Go packets and forced myself to drink water regularly. This change resulted in an additional loss of 5 lbs. For whatever reason, the CL packets soon became too sweet for my sweet tooth and I stopped using them.
    • While I drink mostly water, I somehow picked up a daily habit of drinking coffee and lattés along the way. I usually make my own coffee but often order my lattés at coffee shops or cafés. I initially didn’t care about drinking whole milk but I soon learned that the calories can quickly add up between the vanilla shots and 16 oz. of milk.
    • Now, I ask for sugar-free vanilla lattés with skim milk. (These are called “skinny lattés” at Starbucks.) I always hated skim milk but forced myself to get used to it if I really wanted the pounds
      to continue to peel off. I still get my caffeine fix but for significantly less calories. Depending on the size I get, my latté can vary from 90-175 calories. Not bad when a regular vanilla latté is easily 300.
  • I began eating Lean Cuisine or Healthy Choice for lunch. This is something that’s since dropped out of my diet but I need to reincorporate because it’s offered me the most results. I limited myself to LC or HC only and fought off any other hunger urges if I could. These pre-made frozen meals led to another 5-lb weight loss. (NOTE: The sodium counts on some of these meals are ridiculous, negating the healthy benefits of the low-calorie count, and causing increased hunger. Check the Nutritional Information for products that contain — on average — 600 mg or less of sodium. I’ve found that more than that can be counterproductive. Healthy Choice is pretty good about keeping the sodium milligrams around 500 or less.)
  • walkingI began commuting to the city and walked from the train station to work for a total of 20-30 minutes round-trip. I skipped walking during severe heatwaves and rain. The bus to the train station from my job wasn’t very reliable so I often ended up walking for at least 10 minutes during the day. Or more if I walked somewhere (usually by myself at a faster pace) for lunch. I lost 5 more pounds.
  • I ended up in the psych hospital. This is NOT recommended. I didn’t like much of the food so I hardly ate anything. I was also started on Effexor XR, of which weight loss was a side effect. I dropped a good 10 lbs in 7 days as a result of this. By this point, I was down to 150 — my “Freshman 15” weight.
  • Since my body was getting used to the 20-30 minute work walks, I began working out at the gym at least 2-3 days a week for at least 30 minutes. I attempted to do a minimum of 20 minutes of cardio and 10 minutes of strength training or vice versa. I maintained a weight between 140-145 lbs for more than a year.

I haven’t been able to crack 139 on the scale for whatever reason and my goal is for a weight maintenance of 130-135 lbs. The BMI scale recommends that I weigh 110-125 lbs for my height.  Considering that my 26-year-old body is significantly different than my 16-year-old body, I’m not going to shoot for anything less than 130. I think to do so at this point in my life would be unrealistic. Besides, I wouldn’t want to be that skinny again anyway. 110 lbs on a 16-year-old looks vastly different on a 26-year-old  or a 36-year-old or a… you get the point. I’ve made 130 my minimum — a goal I’m sure I’ll be happy with if I’m able to attain it. Even if I bounced between 130 and 140 lbs, I wouldn’t mind as long as I didn’t regain my Freshman 15 weight. But I’m a work in progress.

Pristiq's side effects: Too close to Premarin and Prempro for comfort?

~ K ~ 3 Comments

Back in January 2007, I’d mentioned that Wyeth was not only seeking to market Pristiq (desvenlafaxine) for depression but also for the use of vasomotor symptoms in menopausal women.

I just learned that Wyeth produces two major menopause drugs, Premarin and Prempro, that allegedly has produced hormones causing cancer in more than 5,000 women. This added up to a loss of 40 million users and $1 billion annually.

With Effexor going generic in 2 years and the introduction of Pristiq to the market, Wyeth hopes to lure some of those customers back and net an annual $2 billion. However, serious questions linger about Pristiq’s side effects in menopausal women.

Why did two women in the study group taking Pristiq have heart attacks
and three need procedures to repair clogged arteries compared with none
taking placebo? How can Wyeth assure long term safety when 604 of the
2,158 test subjects took Pristiq for only six months and 318 for a year
or more? And what about serious liver complications seen in the studies?

Martha Rosenberg, reporting on Pristiq’s use as a menopausal drug, culled comments from CafePharma’s message boards and found one thread rife with mixed comments on the new drug. From an Anonymous commenter:

Continue reading “Pristiq's side effects: Too close to Premarin and Prempro for comfort?” →

John Grohol interviews Wyeth's VP of Medical Affairs on Pristiq

~ K ~ 1 Comment

Dr. Grohol interviewed Dr. Phil Ninan, Wyeth’s VP of Medical Affairs on Pristiq, its efficacy, and surrounding issues. It was quite an interesting interview (and long) but here are some highlights that I chose to comment on. I’ll be making some comments in between Dr. Ninan’s answers due to the extensive length. Some parts of the answers have been truncated.

Continue reading “John Grohol interviews Wyeth's VP of Medical Affairs on Pristiq” →

My official position on pharmaceutical companies and psychotropic meds

~ K ~ 9 Comments

In previous posts, perhaps I’ve come off a little bit as “I hate Big Pharma.” I did. For a while.

I’m not in love with pharmaceutical companies either. I’ve quoted it before but “to whom much is given, much is required.” As a result of accumulating knowledge through reading and research, I know a whole lot more about pharmaceutical companies, the treatment options they put out there, and what lengths they go to get those treatments out there. Most of the things I read are negative. Much of what I’ve said is negative. Perhaps “ignorance is bliss.” My husband said this recently:

“The Internet is the great bitching ground. No one’s going to talk about how great medication is. Everyone’s going to go on and just bitch about side effects and bad experiences.”

I agree. “Effexor really helped me feel better today” doesn’t make for an interesting blog post. No one pays attention to medication when it’s working, however, everyone will complain if something is going wrong. The most “positive” drug comments I’ve seen are on my seemingly “negative” posts from people who are being helped by a drug.

Take, for instance, the following comment from Suffering:

Continue reading “My official position on pharmaceutical companies and psychotropic meds” →

Wyeth Pushing Pristiq Hard

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PristiqThe Wall Street Journal reports that Wyeth, desperate to make money off of its Effexor XR-knockoff, Pristiq, says it will slash the antidepressant at a 20% discount compared to Effexor’s price. The price slash, CNN money reports, is a result of less-than-impressive clinical trial data on Pristiq’s “safety and effectiveness.”

Wyeth SVP Joe Mahady told analysts that Pristiq will sell for a flat $3.41 per tablet for both mid- and high-dose, Dow Jones Newswires’ Peter Loftus reports.

Wyeth, apparently, has done this in the past. Back when it was known as American Home Products, the company slashed its price on Protonix, its heartburn drug, to compete with AstraZeneca’s Prilosec. The drug generated $1.9 billion in profits for Wyeth last year. CNN Money reports that Teva Pharmaceuticals and Sun Pharmaceuticals began selling the generic version of the drug and handily cut into Wyeth’s profits: the company reported a 4.6% decline in profit and a 66% drop in sales for the drug for the first-quarter. What will happen with Pristiq remains to be seen. I’m not sure that doctors in 2010 will want to dole out prescriptions for Pristiq when they can save patients—and insurance companies—money by prescribing what will then be known as venlafaxine. WSJ also notes:

A month’s supply of sertraline (Pfizer’s old hit Zoloft) or fluoxetine (Lilly’s Prozac) goes for 50 cents a day at drugstore.com.

$3.41 or $0.50 per tablet. It wouldn’t surprise me if some insurance companies choose to exclude Pristiq from its list of covered drugs. Regardless, Wyeth expects sales of the drug to exceed $1 billion in its first year.

The drug will hit the shelves in May.

Wyeth reps no like Pristiq

~ K ~ Leave a comment

Oof. I'm just starting to read The Carlat Psychiatry Blog and stumbled upon this post about Wyeth drug reps trashing Pristiq. Wow. Carlat pulled an excerpt of a Wyeth rep mocking Pristiq's new marketing slogan: "People, Passion, Performance… Pristiq!"

"PEOPLE – 1/2 of you will be gone in less than 27 days

PASSION – There is no passion now, but for those that remain with Wyeth, we will bribe the passion out of you by taking you to Vegas for 4 days.

PERFORMANCE – You thought it was hard to reach your performance incentive before? Wait until 2nd quarter

PRISTIQ – Good luck selling both Effexor XR and Pristiq at the same time. So Dr., would you like to hear about my antidepressant that has been around for 12 years, with proven efficacy with the ability to titrate the dose as need to better care for each patient's needs that will have generic competition in 4 months, or would you like to hear about my brand new antidepressant with one dose, less indications and less evidence of efficacy? You want me to choose, let me check with my bonus plan to see which one pays more."

Carlat:

If this is the typical attitude within the Pristiq sales force, Wyeth may end up a little shy of the blockbuster they were hoping for!

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Pristiq's under-the-radar clinical trials

~ K ~ 1 Comment

News stories on Wyeth’s Pristiq, Effexor’s “knockoff”, have focused on the drug’s uses that are pending FDA-approval: vasomotor symptoms accompanying menopause (see hot flashes) and depression. (“Knockoff” term courtesy of CLPsych.) The major media has failed to pick up on Wyeth’s Phase III clinical trials to use Pristiq for fibromyalgia and neuropathic pain (injured tissue or damaged nerve fibers) in diabetics. A search for Pristiq on Wyeth’s Web site yields no results. Desvenlafaxine yields two very meager results.

In related matters, bifeprunox is pending FDA-approval for the use of schizophrenia and is still in Phase III for use of bipolar disorder. They are also in Phase III of testing Lybrex (levonorgestrel) for use for Premenstrual Dysmorphic Disorder in addition to the drug functioning as an oral contraceptive. (I’ll be honest; I had NO clue that diagnosis existed.) In any event, I’ve been misdiagnosed because according to the symptoms, I qualify. I think I also qualify for OOPS – Overdiagnosed and Overmedicated Patient Syndrome.

I’d like expound on Wyeth’s Learn and Confirm phase that’s supposed to replace Phase I and II of clinical trials. It sounds like a speedier way to just get drugs to Phase III of clin. trials, but it’s late and I’m working on something else, so I’ll save that for another day.

Also something to tackle in the future: All these interesting clinical trial results for Effexor XR involving depression and GAD. We’ll see…

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Mood: 6.5

Blogs: Tracking Effexor Withdrawal

~ K ~ 5 Comments

I really should have posted on this a LONG time ago, but Graham’s Blog has done an unbelievable job of tracking his Effexor withdrawal symptoms. Something I learned today:

"| Night Sweats – I had this very bad, constantly wake up drenched in sweat,
literally soaked to the skin and to the mattress. But Have just realised I have
not had these severity of symptoms for some weeks, which is helping with the
consistency of sleep."

Ohh, so that’s why I wake up drenched in sweat in the middle of the night regardless of whether it’s warm or cold in my room. To quote Dawdy over at Furious Seasons, like Paxil, it truly is the "gift that keeps on giving." Hooray for long-lasting effects from psych meds! [sarcasm] Now, I’ve got this occasional twitch in my cheek. I took Paxil for about 3 months in 2003 and I still get eye twitches that I never had previous to the medication.

Check out Graham’s Blog and see the hell that Effexor can cause. Stephany at soulful sepulcher tracks some helpful tips for withdrawing from a psych med.