Women's Health

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Image 1: (POM) NorLevo 1.5mg Packaging.

On the 15th of February 2011, after having rejected the manufacturer's first application for a POM to P switch only a year before, and much to everyone's surprise, the Irish Medicines Board (IMB) approved the morning after pill NorLevo for over the counter supply by a pharmacist.

The switch caught much of the profession off guard, causing a lot of confusion in the first few weeks following this announcement. At the same time the IMB also launched a legal challenge to Boots' Emergency Contraception Service which launched only a month earlier.

Boots have been providing prescription only contraception tablets Levonelle and NorLevo under their in-house developed patient group direction (PGD). This is a protocol, authorised by a doctor, through which a pharmacist may supply a prescription only medicine without the need for the customer to see the doctor first.

Taking multivitamins neither increases nor decreases the risk of cancer or cardiovascular disease in women, a study published in the February 2009 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine has shown.

Over 160,000 women from the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) took part in the study, nearly half of which used multivitamins on a regular basis.

Cranberry is a widely cultivated plant, with the majority of the crop processed into juice, sauce or dried and sweetened. Cranberry sauce is regarded indispensable in American and Canadian Thanksgiving dishes, but recently it has become a lot more popular, thanks to its high antioxidant capacity and microbe fighting properties. Cranberries are a good source of polyphenol antioxidants, anthocyanidin flavonoids, cyanidin, peonidin and quercetin.