Oral Contraceptives May Increase Risk of Multiple Sclerosis

Stuart SchlossmanMS Research Study and Reports

multiple sclerosis and birth control pillsA new study shows that women who have taken oral contraceptives have an increased risk ofmultiple sclerosis (MS). However, this doesn’t mean that women should stop using birth control, Fox News reports.
Researchers used membership data from Kaiser Permanente Southern California and analyzed the health records of 305 women aged 14 to 48 who were diagnosed with MS or its precursor, clinically isolated syndrome (CIS), between 2008 and 2011. They looked at the women’s birth control use up to three years prior to the onset of MS symptoms. According to Fox News, researchers found that the risk of developing MS among women who used oral contraceptives for at least three months increased 30 percent, compared to a control group of 3,050 women who did not have MS.
Study author Dr. Kerstin Hellwig, a post-doctoral research fellow at Kaiser Permanente Southern California, told Fox News that 29.2 percent of women with multiple sclerosis used birth control before their diagnoses, while 23 percent of women in the healthy control group used birth control, showing an increased risk with higher use of the drug.

There was also a slightly higher risk for women who did not currently use an oral contraceptive but had in some time in the three years prior to being diagnosed, researchers found, concluding that use of birth control is not a firmly established cause for MS, but they do see a link.


“It’s not clear what role [hormones] play in the development of the disease, but it’s clear that two to three times more women than men have MS,” Hellwig said to Fox News.Hellwig’s team studied data for women who used oral contraceptives for at least three months, which limited the analysis because they weren’t able to study lifetime exposure, she noted. She expects to see an increased risk with longer use in their final analysis, which will be presented at the upcoming American Academy of Neurology’s Annual Meeting. Most of the women used an estrogen and progestin formulation of birth control, a commonly used combination.


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