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Taking birth control pills may prolong a woman's life--study
by Natalie James - March 13, 2010 - comments
The study results show that women who have taken oral contraceptives at some point in their lives have a lower risk of death than women who have never been prescribed pills.
Here’s good news for women who use birth-control pills. They live longer than those not taking the pill. In one of the world’s largest studies on birth-control pills, it has been found that women who take oral contraceptives are less likely to die from any type of cancer or heart disease.
Oral contraceptives, also called birth control pills, are taken by millions of women to help prevent pregnancy.
But, a previous research has linked the pills to an increased risk of heart disease, even for women who no longer use the pills. Some other studies linked the oral contraceptives to an increase blood pressure and also revealed that it may raise the risk of getting blood clots.
Contrary to those studies, the novel research by British researchers has linked the use of contraceptive pills to the longevity.
The study results show that women who have taken oral contraceptives at some point in their lives have a lower risk of death than women who have never been prescribed pills.
The pills also cut women's risk of dying from bowel cancer by 38 percent, the experts found.
Study detail
To reach their findings, Dr. Philip Hannaford of the University of Aberdeen, leader of a new study, and colleagues tracked more than 46,000 women for nearly 40 years from 1968, according to the Associated Press.
During the follow-up the researchers compared the number of deaths in women on the pill (who generally took it for almost four years) to those who never took it.
Results
They found that death from any cause was 12 percent lower among birth control pill users than among those who never took the pills. The pills also cut women's risk of dying from bowel cancer by 38 percent, the experts found.
"If you took a group of 100,000 women and they used the Pill for a year, on average you'd have 52 fewer deaths compared to those using other forms of contraception," UK’s Mirror quoted Hannaford as saying.
The results, published online in the British Medical Journal, reversed earlier speculation that women on the pill were at risk of dying sooner.
"This is very reassuring and enables us to say with confidence to women that if they choose to use the pill as their contraceptive, they are highly unlikely to do long-term damage to themselves," Hannaford said in an e-mail to MedPage Today, according to ABC News.
Findings reflect older types of contraceptives However he said their data reflects older types of birth control, not contemporary versions of the drug because they assessed it from the Royal College of General Practitioners' Oral Contraceptive Study, which began in 1968.
"Many women, especially those who used the first generation of oral contraceptives many years ago, are likely to be reassured by our results. However, our findings might not reflect the experience of women using oral contraceptives today, if currently available preparations have a different risk than earlier products," Hannaford said.
About the contraceptive pills
Introduced in the 1960s, the oral contraceptives are medicines are taken by mouth to help prevent pregnancy.
Commonly known as birth control pill, the medicine is now the world's most popular form of contraception used by more than 12 million women in the United States, some 3 million women in UK and more than 60 million women worldwide, as per the estimates of U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The contraceptive pill that revolutionized birth control practices uses hormones to suppress ovulation. The pill, typically containing estrogen or progesterone, inhibits ovulation and thereby prevents conception.