A recent study has indicated that a commonly utilized contraceptive pill may be associated with a heightened risk of brain cancers.
The mini-pill, which is taken every day and is commonly thought to be a safer choice than the combined pill, may raise the risk of getting a meningioma, which is a non-cancerous but possibly hazardous tumor that can push on the brain.
The Daily Mail says that experts are interested in the type of progesterone in the pill, called desogestrel.
Researchers have detected a worrying trend with desogestrel, which is often given to people who can’t take oestrogen-based birth control.
A group of French experts looked at the medical records of more than 8,000 women who had surgery for meningioma. Many of these women had been taking the desogestrel mini-pill for five years or more.
However, researchers urge women to know that the overall risk is still very low before they start to worry.
Dr. Mangesh Thorat, a population health expert at Queen Mary University of London, said, “The size of the increase in the risk [of meningioma] is small.”
He told patients that there is no higher danger with short-term usage of the mini-pill and that the extra risk goes away after a year of not using it.
Researchers who wrote for the British Medical Journal said that just one in every 67,000 women using desogestrel would get a meningioma that was bad enough to necessitate surgery.
And, most importantly, the higher risk was only shown in people who had been using it for five years or more. It went away completely within a year of discontinuing.
What Is a Meningioma, Anyway?
It is a tumor that grows in the brain’s lining. More than 90% of them are not harmful, which means they won’t spread to other parts of the body.
But they aren’t a joke. They can grow and push on brain tissue, which can cause headaches, vision problems, seizures, memory loss, and nausea that won’t go away.
They often need surgery as they start to put more pressure on the inside of the skull.
A persistent headache and continual nausea, which is typically accompanied by drowsiness, are common signs of a meningioma.
The results come right after another fright.
Hundreds of women in the UK started thinking about suing just a few weeks ago after a different study indicated that a hormone-based birth control shot with identical substances raised the same red flags.
Women who had the shot for more than a year were five times as likely to get a meningioma.
Health experts are urging for greater investigation on the mini-pill now that it is being looked at closely.
Dr. Jyoti Thorat from the Institute of Cancer Research in London said that the study only looked at one type of mini-pill, desogestrel. She also said that the results might not be true for all types of the drug, especially ones that aren’t often prescribed in France.
He asked for more research in other countries to learn more about how this affects the whole world.
About 6% of women in the UK between the ages of 16 and 49 use the mini-pill. It makes cervical mucus thicker and the lining of the womb thinner, which makes it tougher for sperm to reach an egg. It also stops some women from ovulating.
It works more than 99% of the time when taken correctly. But in real life (missed doses, illness), roughly 1 in 10 women could still get pregnant.
Some women believe they gain weight while taking the pill, but the NHS says there isn’t enough data to show that it really does. Other side effects can include nausea, mood fluctuations, breast tenderness, and headaches.
And there’s even more. A recent study also found that the mini-pill may increase the risk of asthma. According to research released just last month, women with asthma who use the mini-pill may be a third more likely to have an episode.