Diethylstilbestrol (DES) - Medical Breakthrough, Signs Of Trouble, Effects On The Developing Embryo
women daughters estrogen researchers
The substance diethylstilbestrol (DES) is a synthetic, nonsteroidal estrogen, which was first made in 1938. Initially the substance was seen as a great scientific breakthrough, drawing on research that documented the importance of naturally occurring estrogen in women. Wide-scale use of DES by pregnant women to prevent miscarriage beginning in the 1940s ended in 1971 when researchers discovered that some daughters of women who took DES had developed a rare cancer, called clear-cell adenocarcinoma of the vagina. Researchers have since found that daughters of women who took DES face a higher risk of certain cancers and of structural abnormalities in the genital area. The example of DES, used by two to three million American women, has been used to dramatize the risk of improperly tested medicine during pregnancy.
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The development of DES by British scientist Edward Dodds (1899-1973) was one in a long line of twentieth century medical advances which reflected new understanding of the female reproductive system. While doctors had observed pregnancy, childbirth, miscarriages, and infertility for centuries, they did not gain an understanding of the hormonal functions behind these processes until the twentieth ce…
The largest number of DES prescriptions were ordered in 1953. By the middle 1950s, a series of studies suggested that DES did not actually help prevent miscarriages. Yet the drug continued to be given to pregnant women throughout the 1960s. Then, in the late 1960s, doctors noticed a series of cases of vaginal cancer in teenage girls and women in their twenties. This was troubling, because vaginal …
Various theories to account for the effects of DES have been presented. What is clear is that the diseases associated with DES derive from structural damage of the fetus caused by the drug. The drug is most damaging when taken early in pregnancy, when the reproductive organs are formed. (Researchers have found that daughters of mothers who took DES in their eighteenth week of pregnancy or later ha…
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