Link between Birth Control Pills and Heart Disease?

Filed in archive Heart and Stroke by Terah Shelton on November 7, 2007

Ladies, we may need to rethink our form of birth control. According to researchers at the Ghent University in Belgium, women who take - or have ever taken - birth controls face an increased risk of heart disease.

Researchers studied over 1,300 women from the ages of 25 and 55 who previously used birth control pills. Most of the participants had used them for over 13 years. Their findings concluded that the existence of plaque in blood vessels. Even more, women on oral contraceptives faced a 20 to 30 percent increase for every 10 years they take the pill.

However, their findings are not without controversy. Two past studies have also concluded that the link between birth control pills and heart disease does not exist.

And researchers in the WISE study group at the Cedars-Sinai Research Institute in Los Angeles completed a study of 672 postmenopausal women in 2006 that showed that past oral contraceptive use not only didn't increase the chances of coronary artery disease, but actually protected women from such heart ills.

Lead author of the WISE study Dr. Noel Bairey-Merz conceded that her study looked at a different population - postmenopausal women with an average age of 60.

But she said that current evidence does not suggest that women taking oral contraceptives have an increased risk of heart disease once they pass menopause.

"So that's an example of something you measure when women are 35 years old that doesn't always predict what they're going to be like when they're 65," she said.

Conversely, two earlier metaanalysis studies (those which compile the results of previous studies) suggest that the pill - or at least the older versions of the pill - are linked to an 80 percent to 200 percent increased risk of heart attack in women currently using them.

In light of this, some doctors say, the only sure conclusion that can be made is that the exact link between oral contraceptives and heart problems will likely continue to be a controversial one.

"This new Belgium study does not provide a definitive answer to the question of whether or not past oral contraceptive use actually increases the risk of having a heart attack," said ABC News Medical Editor Dr. Tim Johnson. "Other studies addressing this question are contradictory.

"So this is a situation where the old cliché is really true - we need more study."