Seems that Dr Studd was involved in this. The results....whenever they are available should be very interesting.
I found this article.
I think it's quite old but makes interesting reading as we have had many questions about this over the years and this is the place to discuss it.
It comes from an old Guardian article
" Women want them. Doctors have mocked them.
American women rub it on their faces and arms and swear that it reaches places other moisturisers don't.
Now a multi-million dollar cream, sold as a cosmetic in the US, is being tested as one half of a potential dream ticket 'natural' HRT that could hit the market just as the baby-boomer generation hits the menopause.
Natural progesterone cream holds a uniquely contentious position in the UK. It's banned as an over-the-counter product because it's a hormone.
Doctors deride it as a clinical joke, saying it isn't even absorbed through the skin. But thousands of women are rattling at regulators' doors demanding access to a product they believe could add quality to their postmenopausal years. So what is the story with 'natural' progesterone cream?
The history of the cream starts in the States in the late 70s when researchers first realised that using oestrogen on its own as a therapy for osteoporosis raised the risk of cancer.
The pharmaceutical industry responded by adding progestogen, a synthetic form of progesterone developed for the contraceptive Pill, to oestrogen replacement therapy, making what we currently know as HRT.
But progestogens can have unpleasant side-effects in some women including headaches, mood swings, bloating and bleeding symptoms which have helped to make HRT a minority experience. Less than 10% of women continue taking HRT beyond one year, despite studies showing long-term beneficial effects on heart and bones.
The 'natural' version of the hormone, previously only available as an injection, isn't natural in the way that vitamin C in oranges is natural. It is chemically synthesised, from a plant, usually soya or wild yam just as progestogen is.
What allows people to coin the word 'natural' is that it is chemically identical to a woman's own progesterone and therefore, at least theoretically, less likely to cause side effects.
First made up by a US biochemist and sold in health food shops, the cream was taken up by a West Coast physician, John Lee, who has recommended it to thousands of women over the last two decades.
His claims for the hormone never subjected to scientific scrutiny are massive, far out-shining the claims for oestrogen. Progesterone cream, he claims, not only maintains bone mass as oestrogen does, it also actually builds bone, repairing any damage caused by osteoporosis.
Lee's own records of a 100 women patients show an average 15% and up to 50% increase in bone density.
Not surprisingly, such claims have been dismissed by the medical establishment as both unproven and unlikely. The first-ever clinical study on progesterone cream carried out by Kings College Hospital gynaecologist, Professor Malcolm Whitehead, two years ago, found that it wasn't absorbed properly through the skin.
'Even if it could be absorbed, there would still be insurmountable problems, in my view,' says Whitehead. Unlike oestrogen, progesterone acts as a building block for a whole range of other hormones which means its plasma half-life is about 20 minutes. That means huge quantities would be required in order for it to have any effect, he says.
For such an unpromising product, natural progesterone is still the subject of intense clinical interest not least because women users have been so vocal.
Trials of the cream are about to about to start at Chelsea and Westminster hospital in combination with another 'natural' hormone, oestradiol, also extracted from wild yam or soya and chemically identical to the body's oestrogen, unlike the oestrogens most widely used in current HRTs.
It is also available as a cream. Up to seven double-blind randomised trials are being mounted to test the ability of these two hormone creams to work together as well as their impact in preventing menopausal symptoms and their effect on bones. Unusually the studies are being financed by funds raised on the stock market by Higher Nature, an alternative health company.
Gynaecologist John Studd who is supervising the trial, emphasises that the lack of data on natural progesterone means that anything could happen in the trials. 'We've no idea whether it will have any effect at all or whether it will cause bleeding when used in combination with oestrogen.'
But, says Studd, it is undoubtedly true that if a combination of natural oestrogen cream and natural progesterone cream used every day could provide the protection and the health benefits of HRT without the side effects, it would be a brilliant success.
There are encouraging omens. For a start, research already carried out by the Chelsea and Westminster team suggests that absorption is not, in fact, a problem though it may take slightly longer, than previously believed for blood levels of the hormone to rise.
'My personal experience now suggests that there is absorption of progesterone from progesterone creams, though until we have published the evidence, obviously there will be scepticism within the medical community and rightly so,' says Adam Carey, senior registrar working on the trials.
Adam Carey adds that in the second half of their menstrual cycle, women produce around 25mgs of progesterone every day which has a range of important though poorly understood benefits for women.
'Back in the 30s, scientists found that feeding mashed-up sheep's ovaries to menopausal women improved their symptoms - and it's taken us all this time since then to explain what happens. It could be the same story with progesterone.' "
Interesting stuff.
Honeybun
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Topic: Progesterone cream undergoing trials (Read 16611 times)