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Contraceptive pill effective even 5 days after intercourse
by Jamie Anderson - January 29, 2010 - comments
A new morning-after pill can be used up to five days after sex, longer than any protection against pregnancy developed so far.
London, January 29-- If you have had unprotected sex, you have a time frame of 5 days or as many as 120 hours to make amends.
A newly licensed emergency contraception pill, known as Ellaone, has been found effectual in reducing the chances of unwanted pregnancy even when taken five days after sex.
Accessibility a concern
Emergency contraceptive invariably release hormones that either foil the discharge of an egg by the ovary or thwart the implantation of the egg into the womb.
Ellaone contains a synthetic version of female hormone progesterone and has proved successful in stalling as many as 98 percent of pregnancies when taken five days after sex.
Levonorgestrel, the original morning-after pill, has been found to be 95 percent effective Furthermore, the efficacy of Levonorgestrel falls to 58 percent if it is consumed after three days after sexual intercourse.
Ann Furedi, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, explained the new drug as "exciting news" as it offered a longer time window for use than the conventional pill.
"Different hormones are involved to the ones traditionally used in contraception, so it may be that these will prove to have other contraceptive uses in future,” Furedi said.
"However, accessibly is key to the uptake of any time-sensitive medication and since this pill is not currently available over-the-counter and is significantly more expensive to buy than the traditional 'morning after pill', it may be that many women who could benefit from it are not able to access it," opined Furedi.
High price justified
Currently, the new wonder drug is available only on prescription, unlike its rival levonorgestrel, which is an over-the-counter drug. Ellaone comes with a price tag of £17 vis-à-vis £6 for Levonorgestrel.
Researcher Dr Anna Glasier of NHS Lothian in Edinburgh said, "If it stops more unwanted pregnancies, that is money well spent."
The side effects in both two drugs have been found to be similar and of equal magnitude.
Not everybody is happy with the new drug though. Anti-abortion activists have termed Ellaone as a potential baby killer. According to them, women would terminate pregnancies under the facade of morning-after pill.
Josephine Quintavalle, of the ProLife Alliance, a campaign group against abortion said, “If you take a morning-after pill within 24 hours, there is always the argument that the sperm may not have fertilised the egg by then, meaning pregnancy has not yet happened.”
“But if this pill works for five days there is no argument. This is not a contraceptive, it is an abortive agent,” argued Quintavalle.