Distributed until 1977, Distilbene was a drug believed to prevent miscarriages. Responsible for cancer in patients for whom it was prescribed, it was banned from marketing. Today, a new study shows that an abnormally high number of granddaughters of these patients is born with a fragment of the uterus and genital defects.
In 1983, the Distilbene scandal broke out through the gynecologist Anne Cabau. This synthetic hormone prescribed in France to women from the 1950s was to prevent miscarriages, the risks of prematurity and treat hemorrhages in pregnancy. Since 1953, studies have shown the harmful effects of the drug on patients … and their children; in addition to not preserving the miscarriages for which it was prescribed.
Distilbene was responsible for serious gynecological cancers, infertility in girls exposed to the drug in the womb or even genital malformations in boys. Like Guillaume Depardieu who revealed in 2004: “My mother took a drug, Distilbene, which was banned, after all the side effects it caused: there were three hundred cases in France, including many girls who have been made sterile. “. Gérard Depardieu’s son was born with a malformation of the sex and “bodily malformations, bones that have grown too much”, which required several operations.
A heavy medicinal heritage
More than 40 years after the end of the marketing of Distilbene, a study by the association DES France, carried out on the granddaughters of people who have taken this drug, has just shown an abnormally high number of births with Rokitansky syndrome, or a total or partial absence of a uterus. Out of 759 granddaughters, 3 were born with this syndrome compared to 1 in 4,500 for the rest of the population, reports The Parisian. Anne Wautier, one of the gynecologists who conducted this work, reassures: “The consequences for the third generations such as ectopic pregnancies, late miscarriages or prematurity are incommensurate with the second generations”.
The DES Network hopes that one of the special status of “Distilbene girls” will be recognized. It would allow specific, annual gynecological monitoring fully reimbursed. “They have twice as much dysplasia (lesions of the cervix) than the others. The second generation also had an increased risk of a serious cancer called ACC of the vagina, around the age of 20. But what they know less is that there is a new threat peak around the age of 70, “warns Michel Tournaire, a gynecologist interviewed by The Parisian.
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