Privatpraxis Prof. Hotze (Schilddrüsenkrankheiten, Präventivmedizin)

Newsletter 01/2007 - English Version

2007-03-01

Armour Thyroid^R – A Natural Thyroid Hormone

Going off the Market?

- Facts on Armour Thyroid^R
thyroid.about.com/cs/drugdatabase/f/armour.htm

In her latest newsletter (1) Mary Shomon – a US patient advocate – reports about rumours going like:
Armour Thyroid^R is being taken from the market soon. A patient told her that her pharmacist recommended her asking her doctor to prescribe Synthroid^R (= an US brand leader for synthetic levothyroxine, manufacturer: Abbott Laboratories, 100 Abbott Park Road, Abbott Park, Illinois, USA; German equivalent: L-Thyroxin Henning, manufacturer: Sanofi Aventis, Industriepark Hoechst, D-65926 Frankfurt) because Armour Thyroid^R would be subject of getting taken away from the market.

Those rumours come in regular cycles and are communicated by pharmacists, general practitioners and endocrinologists as an inevitable fact.

Armour Thyroid^R (2) is manufactured by Forest Laboratories (909, 3rd Avenue, New York, NY 10022). Armour Thyroid^R is FDA approved, and on the marked for quite a long time:
For more than 100 years (from the very early 2000s, around 1900) Armour Thyroid^R is on the market. It is made from desiccated thyroid glands of pigs, and has been the only medication for treating thyroidal hypo-function until the mid 1950s. – The history of European thyroid hormone therapy is outlined in a former newsletter (4). –
It was not until 1955 – roughly 55 years (!) after the introduction of Armour Thyroid^R – that the first synthetic thyroid hormone (brand Synthroid^R) entered the US market – with a great media attention.
In 'Old Europe' it was only in 'A.D.' 1958 until the German manufacturer Merck, Darmstadt introduced a synthetic hormone – a triiodothyronine (brand Thybon^R).
In Europe, 10 additional years had to pass (1967), until a synthetic equivalent to Synthroid^R became available (L-Thyroxin-Henning, then manufacturer: Henning Berlin, now: Sanofi Aventis) to substitute the animal hormone Thyreoidea 'Henning' which started in 1926 and ended in 1974.
These facts indicate that obviously it is not that easy to manufacture the hormone synthetically. It hardly would have needed 55 years in the US and 67 years in Europe to fabricate a chemical copy of a 'simply' structured product of nature which ended in 1974 in Germany but is still on the US market.

How did the story go on in the US?

The leading endocrinologists very quickly considered the synthetic hormone 'more modern' and 'more effective' than the natural hormone. Armour Thyroid^R more and more got the image: 'old-fashioned'.

How did the plot 'unfold' in Europe?
Very much like in the US:

The prescription of synthetic levothyroxine (equivalent to Synthroid^R), be it by the leading German manufacturers Sanofi Aventis (5) or Merck (6)) is considered the state of the art of thyroid treatment.
The prescription of a combined synthetic hormone (be it a Merck (7) or a Sanofi Aventis (8)) hormone consisting of both synthetic levothyroxine and triiodothyronine is considered 'old-fashioned' by the majority of physicians.
The brand Armour Thyroid^R is totally unknown to the vast majority of German physicians.
The prescription of Armour Thyroid^R is widely seen as something 'exotic' by the very most physicians, and usually being strongly refused. Because considering even combined synthetic hormones like the brands ProThyroid^R or NovothyralR 'old-fashioned' (being on the market for about 40 years though) the 'fossil' Armour Thyroid^R which is another 50 years older seems like an uncanny phantom from the 'olden days' of around 1900.

According to Mary Shomon no definite research has been done comparing natural and synthetic hormone so that the 'common knowledge' of a 'certain inconsistency' of the animal hormone is rather based on marketing and advertising than on scientific work.

PS2:
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Sources

1) thyroid.about.com/od/isthatso/f/armour.htm
2) www.frx.com/products/armour.aspx
3) www.fda.gov/
4) www.schilddruesenpraxis.de/nl_200607.shtml
5) L-Thyroxin Henning^R, Sanofi Aventis, Frankfurt
6) Euthyrox^R, Merck, Darmstadt
7) Novothyral^R, Merck
8) Prothyrid^R, Sanofi Aventis