- WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Women
who use the injected contraceptive Depo-Provera have a higher rate of sexually
transmitted diseases, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.
-
- This holds true even when behavior and other factors
are taken into account, the research team at the National Institutes of
Health, University of North Carolina and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore
found.
-
- More study is needed, but it is possible that Depo-Provera
itself causes a susceptibility to STDs, said Charles Morrison of Family
Health International in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, who led
the study.
-
- "We did adjust for differences in condom use, differences
in multiple partners, differences in the number of sexual coital acts,"
Morrison said in a telephone interview.
-
- Inner-city and younger women also had a higher risk of
STDs, but using Depo-Provera added to the risk, study found.
-
- Morrison said the researchers were especially concerned
because Depo-Provera or its generic equivalent are being increasingly used
in Africa, where STDs such as the AIDS virus are very common.
-
- He said women who use Depo-Provera to prevent pregnancy
should take extra care if they are in relationships in which either they
or their partner have sex with other people.
-
- Like birth control pills, Depo-Provera provides no protection
from an infection such as syphilis, gonorrhea or the AIDS virus.
-
- "For sexually active women not in a mutually monogamous
relationship, limiting the number of partners may also help to reduce the
risk," Morrison added.
-
- The researchers studied about 800 women age 15 to 45
using two clinics in the Baltimore area -- one urban, serving mostly black
women, and one suburban with a client base of white, college-age women.
Most were single.
-
- The women chose whether they wanted to use Depo-Provera,
contraceptive pills, or a non-hormonal contraceptive method.
-
- After a year, 45 women had become infected with chlamydia
or gonorrhea.
-
- The women using the injected contraceptive were three
times as likely to have one of the STDs, the researchers said.
-
- Women taking the pills did not have a higher risk of
getting an STD, the researchers report in the September issue of the journal
Sexually Transmitted Diseases.
-
- Because there were different numbers of women in each
group, the researchers calculated risk of infection by "women-years"
-- how many women became infected in the space of a year.
-
- The risk for women taking oral contraceptives was 3.9
infections per 100 women-years, 13.7 per 100 women-years in the Depo-Provera
group and 6 per 100 women-years in the women using condoms, diaphragms
or other non-drug birth control methods.
-
- Morrison said although it appeared from looking at the
bare numbers that the pill group had the lowest risk, in fact when other
factors were considered their risk of STDs was about the same as the women
who did not use hormonal contraception.
-
- Depo-Provera is made by Pfizer Inc. and last month Israel's
Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. won U.S. approval for a generic version.
-
- Copyright © 2004 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited
without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable
for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance
thereon.
-
- http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=5
71&ncid=751&e=1&u=/nm/20040823/hl_nm/health_contraceptive_dc
|
