Wyeth said it lost $426.4 million, or 32 cents a share, for the quarter ended Sept. 30, compared with a profit of $1.4 billion, or $1.05 a share, gain in the year-ago period.

Excluding the charge, the company would have had a profit of $874 million, or 65 cents a share. Wall Street analysts were expecting the company to earn 59 cents a share. In the year-ago period, Wyeth earned $627 million, or 47 cents a share, excluding charges.

Revenue rose 13 percent to $4.08 billion in the third quarter.

Wyeth has been hurt by falling sales of its family of hormone replacement products, which have been linked to significant health risks.

And litigation continues over Wyeth's recalled diet drugs, part of the once-wildly popular fen-phen combination. Wyeth has already paid more than $13 billion in claims related to the drugs Pondimin and Redux, which were pulled from the market in 1997.

For the first nine months of the year, Wyeth's net income fell 40 percent to $1.72 billion, or $1.29 a share, from $2.87 billion, or $2.15 a share.