It has been just revealed the fact that the high blood clot risk dropped for women who stopped common contraception. Check out the latest reports about the matter below.
Stopping contraception can lower blood clot risk
Using birth control pills and other hormone-based contraceptives can increase the risk of developing blood clots. It is also important to note the fact that recent research suggests that this risk decreases rapidly within two to four weeks of stopping the contraception, and disappears completely by 12 weeks.
In a peer-reviewed study published in Blood, a journal by the American Society of Hematology, 66 women aged between 18 to 50 who had been using hormonal contraceptives for at least three months were enrolled.
The research focused on contraceptives such as combined hormone birth control pills, vaginal rings, and skin patches. Women with a personal history of blood clots, anticoagulation, a recent medical event, or pregnancy were excluded from the study.
The researchers collected blood samples from women who had stopped taking contraceptives and compared them to a control group of 28 women who had never used hormone-based contraception. The blood samples were collected six times before and after the women stopped taking contraceptives to assess estrogen-related clotting biomarkers.
The study found that there were elevated levels of clotting markers before the women stopped taking hormone-based contraception, which rapidly decreased within one to two weeks after discontinuing use.
Within two weeks of stopping their birth control, women experienced an 80 percent total drop in clotting markers and an 85 percent drop within four weeks, falling to the same level as the control group by 12 weeks.
It was previously unknown whether the risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) persists after discontinuing hormone-based contraceptives, although studies have shown that women who take these contraceptives have a threefold risk of experiencing VTE.
“Our goal was not to look at the thrombotic risk of contraceptives but to determine how long that risk takes to normalize after stopping contraceptives,” corresponding author Dr. Marc Blondon, an expert in vascular medicine at the University Hospitals of Geneva, Switzerland, said in a Nov. 8 news release.
“It’s reassuring to know that that possible harm of the pill goes away rapidly when one stops taking it.”
