A new era of menopause treatment looks to be on the horizon. This week, drugmaker Bayer published the results of two successful Phase III trials testing its experimental drug elinzanetant as a treatment for hot flashes. The drug is now poised to become the first non-hormonal medication of its kind approved in the world.
Hot flashes and night sweats are common symptoms of menopause, affecting around 80% of women in their lifetime. Formally known as vasomotor symptoms, hot flashes are characterized by sudden bouts of warmth, redness, and sweating, typically around the face, neck, and chest (night sweats are similar, but occur at night and while sleeping). These episodes can be deeply uncomfortable, and more serious cases are thought to raise the risk of poor sleep and depression.
Though hot flashes do decline over time, they often last for at least two years, and some women will experience them for a decade or longer, according to the Mayo Clinic . Historically, hot flashes have been effectively treated with hormone therapy, which aims to replace the levels of estrogen and progesterone that decline with menopause. Starting in the late 1990s, however, large-scale trials began to show that hormone therapy could potentially raise the risk of other health problems, including heart disease, breast cancer, and stroke, in menopausal women—results that soon led to a large and sustained drop-off in the treatment.
Later studies and more recent analyses of the data have found that these.