OBJECTIVE To compare the incidence of venous thromboembolism among women taking combined oral contraceptives before and after the October 1995 pill scare. DESIGN Analysis of General Practice Research Database. SETTING United Kingdom, January 1993 to December 1998. SUBJECTS Women aged 15-49 taking combined oral contraceptives. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Incidence of venous thromboembolism. ...

Exogenous hormones are used by more than a hundred million women worldwide as oral contraceptives or for postmenopausal hormone replacement. Oral contraceptives increase the risk of venous thrombosis, of myocardial infarction, and of stroke. The risk is highest during the first year of use. The venous thrombotic risk of oral contraceptives is high among women with coagulation abnormalities and ...

In a cross sectional study of 137 women of childbearing age (16-40) the effects of normal pregnancy, hypertensive pregnancy, and oral contraceptives on red cell electrolyte content and sodium efflux rates were examined and the results compared with values in a control group of normotensive, non-pregnant women. Efflux rate constants were significantly increased in normotensive pregnancy and in w...

The primary mechanism of oral contraceptives is to inhibit ovulation, but this mechanism is not always operative. When breakthrough ovulation occurs, then secondary mechanisms operate to prevent clinically recognized pregnancy. These secondary mechanisms may occur either before or after fertilization. Postfertilization effects would be problematic for some patients, who may desire information a...

BACKGROUND Understanding the effect of oral contraceptives on risk of breast cancer in BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation carriers is important because oral contraceptive use is a common, modifiable practice. METHODS We studied 497 BRCA1 and 307 BRCA2 mutation carriers, of whom 195 and 128, respectively, had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Case-control analyses were conducted using unconditional logi...

BACKGROUND Use of oral contraceptives could increase risk of cervical cancer; however the effect of human papillomavirus (HPV), the main cause of cervical cancer, is not usually taken into account. We aimed to assess how use of oral contraceptives affected risk of cervical cancer in women who tested positive for HPV DNA. METHODS We pooled data from eight case-control studies of patients with ...

INTRODUCTION Use of hormonal contraceptives for birth control is commonplace in the Western World. In Europe, there is considerable variety in the frequency of use of hormonal contraceptives and in the age at which these contraceptives are initiated. The purpose of the present study was to describe the use of hormonal contraceptives among the Danish adolescent female population, focusing on age...

In this week’s issue of The BMJ, Vinogradova and colleagues (doi:10.1136/bmj.h2135) report the results of a large study on the effects of combined oral contraceptives on the risk of venous thromboembolism, conducted in two large United Kingdom databases: the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) and QResearch. The authors identified over 10 500 cases of VTE in women aged 15-49 years and ar...

and five years after the birth of the last child routine recall should start. The fall in detection rates among women repeatedly presenting themselves for rescreening is so dramatic12 that a limit could be put on rescreening. Multiphasic screening has already been criticised,13 and the Canadians agree that it is not realistic. For example, to link cervical screening with screening for breast ca...

Oral contraceptives containing only a progestogen have had a chequered career. In 1965 trials in Latin America showed that very small amounts of a progestogen, chlormadinone acetate, when given without any added oestrogen had a strong antifertility effect. Not all progestogens are suitable for use alone. Indeed with norethynodrel, the progestogen most commonly used in the late 1960s, the amount...