BOSTON (The Boston Globe) - Judith Wurtman's PMS Escape is back. Three years ago, she worked with Interneuron Pharmaceuticals Inc. to launch the dietary supplement - a powdered carbohydrate and vitamin drink - that helps women manage the normal mood and appetite changes linked with premenstrual syndrome.

Successfully test marketed in Boston and rolled out nationwide in 1999, PMS Escape gained quite a following. But when Interneuron was hit with financial problems, it shelved the product, prompting a barrage of phone calls, e-mails and letters imploring Wurtman to resume production.

Wurtman, a research scientist in the brain and cognitive science department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also runs a weight-loss program at McLean Hospital in Belmont.

Together with her husband Richard Wurtman, a well-known MIT professor and a founding scientist at Interneuron, plus her entrepreneurial nephew in Israel, she has formed Back Bay Scientific Inc. and relaunched PMS Escape.

Using the original formulation but improving on the flavoring, they recently resumed selling a package of eight dissolvable envelopes of PMS Escape for $9.99 via their Web site (www.pmsescape.com).

Wurtman also launched a monthly newsletter called "The Moody Times," and created a Web site that includes recipes to help women overcome their food cravings along with stress-management suggestions.

PMS Escape, which has been clinically tested in two studies, uses carbohydrates to make serotonin, which Judith Wurtman calls the brain's natural mood changer.

"During PMS, there is not enough serotonin in the brain, and when women don't have enough serotonin, they can feel moody and depressed," she said, noting that women too often eat the wrong carbohydrate-filled foods which leads to putting on extra weight.

PMS Escape may also compete against Serafem, from Eli Lilly & Co., a new treatment of premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), an exaggerated form of PMS that affects about 4 million women - 3 to 5 percent of all who menstruate.

Serafem, the first prescription drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treating mood swings and physical symptoms associated with PMDD, is also another version of Prozac, the widely known depression-fighting drug.

Copyright 2001 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.