Worst Pills, Best Pills Warns Against Using Armour Thyroid

But article is long on accusations, short on fact

Let's start with one of the most obvious answers: price. In February of this year, I conducted a survey of thyroid drug costs. To briefly summarize, Drugstore.com was selling 90 tablets of .88 Synthroid for $32.14. Unithroid 88 mcg was $28.77. Levoxyl 88 mcg was $22.22. Levothroid 88 mcg was $19.28 (almost half the price of the Synthroid. And 90 tablets of 1 grain Armour Thyroid (which is not directly equivalent to .88 levothyroxine, but is actually a slightly higher dosage size) -- $13.48 -- a third of the price of the Synthroid. Perhaps just one reason why sales of Armour Thyroid may be growing, given disappearing prescription drug benefits, increasing drug costs, and the fact that the elderly are disproportionately affected by thyroid disease.

And perhaps Dr. Sidney Wolfe needs to re-read his own stern 1996 letter to the FDA. That letter documented a variety of abuses consumers suffered at the hand of levothyroxine manufacturers. It was decades of cavalier manufacturer of levothyroxine, in particular Synthroid, often priced three or more times higher than Armour Thyroid, that forced many physicians and patients to return to Armour, a drug that had been on the market for nearly a century.

And Dr. Wolfe and colleagues also need to pick up a few back issues of the [link url=http://thyroid.about.com/library/weekly/aa021199.htm]New England Journal of Medicine[/link], which reported on studies that found that the majority of thyroid patients do not feel well on levothyroxine (which contains only a synthetic version of one thyroid hormone, T4). Rather, these patients felt better and had fewer symptoms with the addition of a second hormone, T3. While the New England Journal articles may be a surprise to Worst Pills, Best Pills, they are no surprise to the practitioners and patients who use Armour Thyroid (which contains both T4 and T3).

The Worst Pills, Best Pills newsletter article concludes:

"if you are offered natural thyroid hormone replacement treatment for any reason, this is a red flag and you should get a second opinion."

Frankly, those who most need a second opinion are the unfortunate readers who are led to believe that the Worst Pills, Best Pills article is anything other than a rehash of tired mythology about desiccated thyroid that has been repeated often enough by the levothyroxine manufacturers and their marketers that it's now mistaken for fact.

Public Citizen states on its website that it is "an independent voice for citizens in the halls of power. We take NO government or corporate money." They urge corporations to stop victimizing consumers and hold government accountable for citizens.

What could possibly motivate such a self-professed champion of the people to turn around and abandon the people, in order to denigrate a safe, effective, 100-year old drug that is serving a portion of the thyroid consumer market, at a third of the price of the top-selling drug?

Some patients do best on a levothyroxine drug like Synthroid, or Levoxyl. Some do best on a combination of levothyroxine and a T3 drug. Others do best on a natural desiccated thyroid drug like Armour Thyroid.

Where Worst Pills, Best Pills ultimately fails its readers, and the American public, is in its inability to recognize that the best thyroid drug for each patient is the drug that safely and effectively works the best for each patient. To suggest otherwise displays a lack of knowledge about the current state of thyroid treatment, and an utter disregard for the quality of life, future, health - and pocketbooks - of millions of Americans.

ACT NOW!!

Write to Worst Pills, Best Pills now and ask them why they have so cavalierly dismissed Armour Thyroid, without any evidence of thoughtful research or inquiry!!

You can email them at: wpbpsupport@citizen.org or write to:

Sidney Wolfe, MD
Editor
Worst Pills, Best Pills
Public Citizen
1600 20th St. NW
Washington, DC. 20009