By Karen Fernandes, R.N., CPHQ
Twitter: @DESInfo411
Facebook: DESInfo
Email: DESInfo411@gmail.com
In 1985, President Ronald Reagan dedicated this week in April as National DES awareness week. This week we also honor DES Info, a group organized by several DES daughters to proactively share information about DES, for its 42 years of advocacy for the DES exposed community.
Between 1941 and into the 1970s, millions of pregnant women in the United States and around the world were prescribed DES (Diethylstilbestrol) to prevent miscarriage. As a result, millions of pregnant women and the children born of these pregnancies were exposed to DES [1] .
As early as 1938 and 1953 there were published reports showing that DES did not prevent miscarriages or premature births and could cause cancer in animal models. In 1953 a large placebo-controlled trial showed DES was ineffective in the prevention of miscarriage.
Nonetheless DES was prescribed until 1971 when the FDA advised physicians to stop prescribing DES as it was shown to cause a rare vaginal cancer in young girls who where exposed to DES in the womb. Further analysis revealed that there were many reproductive organ malformations and dysfunctions in the DES daughters and structural, functional and cellular abnormalities in the genital-urinary tracts of DES sons [2] .
We now know that DES is a known animal and human transplacental carcinogen and teratogen that has affected millions around the world [3] . Indeed, the DES-exposed mouse model has duplicated and predicted many of the lesions noted in DES-exposed women. DES is the poster-child and the canary in the coal mine for the growing fields of Developmental origins of Health and Disease and Multigenerational Inheritance.
The use of DES during pregnancy is a global human tragedy, a tragedy that did not need to happen. Hopefully, we have learned, so nothing like this happens again.
1. Newbold, R.R., Lessons learned from perinatal exposure to diethylstilbestrol. Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology, 2004. 199(2): p. 142-150.
2. Newbold, R.R., Prenatal exposure to diethylstilbestrol (DES). Fertility and Sterility, 2008. 89(2, Supplement): p. e55-e56.
3. Newbold, R.R. and J.A. McLachlan, Transplacental hormonal carcinogenesis: diethylstilbestrol as an example. Prog Clin Biol Res, 1996. 394: p. 131-47.