HEALTHNew birth control pills give more control over menstruationFormulations allow women to have four periods a year or none at all, or shorten them to just a few days.By Victoria Stagg Elliott, amednews staff. July 10, 2006. A handful of new birth control pills either approved within the past couple of years or due soon to reach the marketplace is challenging the notion that women need to have a monthly cycle. "There's nothing that says a woman has to have a period once a month or have it for six days," said LeRoy Sprang, MD, clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. The Food and Drug Administration is currently considering whether Lybrel, a hormonal birth control pill that would be taken every day without a breakthrough bleed, should be approved. Seasonale, which allows for only four periods a year, was approved in September 2003. Seasonique, with a second-generation version that replaces the placebo pills taken every three months with those that provide a low-dose estrogen, was approved in May. Yaz and Loestrin 24 FE were both approved earlier this year and provide 24 days of hormones rather than the traditional 21. The result is a shorter period than what occurs with the standard formulations. Experts attribute the shift away from the pill's traditional 21/7 regimen -- long viewed as the gold standard -- on several converging factors. The pill has been around for decades, meaning that women are more likely to trust it to work without the need for the monthly reassurance that breakthrough bleeding provides. "It was made to appear natural and be reassuring that you're not pregnant," said Leslie Miller, MD, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Washington in Seattle. "Forty-five years later, we don't need that." [...]Full text of American Medical News content is available to AMA members and paid subscribers.
Copyright 2006 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.
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