In July 1961, Searle finally began marketing Enovid 5 mg (5 mg noretynodrel and 75 µg mestranol) to physicians as a contraceptive.Although the FDA approved the first oral contraceptive in 1960, contraceptives were not available to married women in all states until Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965 and were not available to unmarried women in all states until Eisenstadt v. Baird in 1972.The first published case report of a blood clot and pulmonary embolism in a woman using Enavid (Enovid 10 mg in the U.S.) at a dose of 20 mg/day did not appear until November 1961, four years after its approval, by which time it had been used by over one million women. It would take almost a decade of epidemiological studies to conclusively establish an increased risk of venous thrombosis in oral contraceptive users and an increased risk of stroke and myocardial infarction in oral contraceptive users who smoke or have high blood pressure or other cardiovascular or cerebrovascular risk factors. These risks of oral contraceptives were dramatized in the 1969 book The Doctors Case Against the Pill by feminist journalist Barbara Seaman who helped arrange the 1970 Nelson Pill Hearings called by Senator Gaylord Nelson. The hearings were conducted by senators who were all men and the witnesses in the first round of hearings were all men, leading Alice Wolfson and other feminists to protest the hearings and generate media attention.
HDLS cases have been located in Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the United States, showing an international distribution focusing between Northern Europe and the United States.Through the study of numerous kindred, it was found that the disease did not occur among just males or females, but rather was evenly distributed indicative of an autosomal rather than a sex-linked genetic disorder. It was also observed that the HDLS cases did not skip generations as it would occur with a recessive inheritance, and as such has been labeled autosomal dominant. History
This disease was first described in 1984 by Axelsson et al. in a large Swedish pedigree. It is a disorder better known to neuropathologists than clinicians. A neuropathologist with an interest in HDLS, Dr. Dennis W. Dickson, has identified a number of cases from neuropathology study of brains submitted for investigation of familial adult-onset dementia and movement disorders in New York and later in Florida. Recognition of the importance of this disorder as a cause of adult onset dementia and movement disorders was further heightened in 1997 at the Mayo Clinic when Dr. Zbigniew K. Wszolek identified a family with HDLS that was initially thought to be due to another disease process (FTDP-17), but only an autopsy of one and then other family members revealed it to be HDLS. Wszolek established an international consortium in 2005 to identify other families and to collect DNA or brain samples from family members for neuropathologic confirmation and genetic research at the Mayo Clinic in Florida.