DES Daughters: A Medication My Mother Took Before I Was Born Will Affect Me for Life

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A prescription medication has impacted me in several life-changing (and potentially life-threatening) ways — even though I wasn’t the one who took it. It was a drug prescribed to my mother

before I was born.

Years ago, after we saw a news story about the continued ripple effects of diethylstilbestrol, a synthetic estrogen, my now-deceased mother recalled taking it while she was pregnant with me

and possibly at least one of my siblings.

After doing some research, I realized this pre-birth exposure to the drug — which doctors stopped prescribing to pregnant women years ago — is likely to blame for many of my major health

issues and medical conditions.

Women exposed to DES in utero are at increased risk of several specific cancers, including:

They may also have other health issues, including:

Source: National Cancer Institute

I was born with reproductive tract abnormalities, including uterus didelphys (a double uterus), which caused me to have excruciatingly painful periods with bleeding so heavy I would become

anemic and frequently pass out.

I had multiple miscarriages, an ectopic pregnancy and endometriosis. I also had three high-risk pregnancies that reached full term, during which I experienced preeclampsia (a high blood

pressure disorder) and other serious complications. All three of my deliveries were breech births, which is common with pregnancies among women with a double uterus.

The women born to mothers who were given diethylstilbestrol (known as DES) while pregnant are called DES daughters. All of the issues I experienced are commonly seen in DES daughters — like

me.

DES was mainly intended to prevent preterm labor, miscarriage and other pregnancy complications, although it was also used to treat a variety of other conditions including vaginitis and

menopause symptoms. It was first introduced in the U.S. commercial market around 1940, but by the 1960s there was increasing evidence linking the drug to cancer in the daughters of women who

took DES while pregnant.

“Clinical studies in the early to mid-1950s showed that it was not effective at reducing poor pregnancy outcomes, and in the mid-1960s an association [to cancer] was found in the offspring

of mothers exposed to DES,” says David Downing, M.D., an ob-gyn at Weill Cornell Medicine. “Their female children had a much higher incidence of vaginal clear cell adenocarcinoma, a very

rare vaginal cancer.”

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an alert warning doctors about the dangers of the drug to pregnant women in 1971 and its use declined after that, although there are reports of

DES still being given to pregnant women in the U.S. and Europe until at least the late 1970s.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that anywhere from 5 to 10 million people in the U.S. were exposed to DES — which came in various forms, from pills, to creams,

to vaginal suppositories — between 1938 and 1971. This number includes women who were prescribed DES while pregnant and the children born of these pregnancies.

Downing says no form of DES is currently prescribed in obstetrics. However, on rare occasions, it is used as a treatment for prostate cancers.