Ladies, are you using protection?  What kind of contraceptives are you using?  The patch, pill, or shot?  Well, did the doctor warn you of all the side effects?

Science has allowed women to choose from a pool of different birth control methods.  Yet, the use of the oral contraceptive pill (OCP) continues to be a popular birth control method, especially for a person that is just starting to take the pill.  In fact some of the young women here, at Duke, take OCP and those that do not are encouraged to pay the doctor a visit.   

Did you know that the oral contraceptive pill was first introduced in the 1960s?  By 1962, the possibility that strokes may occur because of the pill, was raised.  Well then, is OCP going cause a stroke?  There have been many studies to find an association between OCP and stroke, but no final decisions have been made.  This is due to the fact that OCP contains lower dose of estrogen than in previous years, and current recommendations restrict its use to younger women who do not have other risk factors for cardiovascular disease.   In a recent experiment it was disproved that OCP may cause a stroke.  Instead, other factors were considered the cause of the stroke.

How did they prove this?  Pay close attention to the method.  In the experiment, the case study group was the women who had had a stroke.  In the control, all subjects were between the age of 15 and 55 and were the women who had not had a stroke before.  The control women were matched to the case women.  In order to do this properly, the scientists used a neighborhood selection method.  In this method a nurse went to interview women on the same streets from where the stroke cases originated.  Then the nurse asked several questions to the participants.  The questions were related with whether or not they smoke, drank alcohol, added salt to their food, or peeled the skin off chicken and meat. 

The results showed that of the 234 pairs of cases, the possibility of suffering a stroke is not increased because of the use of OCP.  Diabetes and hypertension disorders were associated with the increase risk suffering a stroke as was smoking more than twenty cigarettes a day, and having a family history of strokes.  New discoveries that may improve our life style will always be of interest to many.  However, discoveries on how to prevent diseases should be further investigated.  Although, it may take a long time to get accurate information about our health, we should not underestimate new findings.

Looks like the pitter patter of those little baby feet can still be prevented! 

 

References

 

Arnold, Jeffrey L.  2003.  Ischemic Stroke.  eMedicine. http://www.emedicine.com/EMERG/topic558.htm  [accessed 2003 November 24]. 

Siritho, Sasitorn, Thrift, Amanda G., McNeil, John J., You, Roger X., Davis, Stephen M., Donnan, Geoffrey A.  “Risk of Ischemic Stroke Among Users of the Oral Contraceptive Pill: The Melbourne Risk Factor Study.”  Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association July 2003: 1575-1580