The biggest ever study of oral contraceptives says even high-dose brands have no long-term ill effects. The 25-year UK study showed that 10 years after giving up the Pill, a woman's chance of dying from cancer and other diseases is the same as that of someone who has never taken oral contraceptives.
The results of the study, involving 46,000 women, were published in the British Medical Journal yesterday. Irish medical experts welcomed the results, saying it showed women had little to fear from the Pill.
The Dublin-based consultant obstetrician/gynaecologist Prof Walter Prendiville, described the results as "fantastic news".
Dr Sheila Jones, medical director of the Irish Family Planning Association, said the results confirmed "what we have long believed that there are no long-term effects associated with the Pill".
It was very reassuring for women who might have been worried, she said. "There is so much bad publicity about the Pill so it is very good that something positive has come out."
Prof Prendiville said that good news about the Pill was always overshadowed by scares but this study showed "to such a massive extent, with a long-term study over a number of years" that there was little cause for concern.
"What this means is that if you have ever been on the Pill you can stop worrying about hangover effects on your body," said the consultant obstetrician/ gynaecologistat Tallaght and the Coombe hospitals.
The Pill is known to be linked with a slight increase in risk from heart disease, stroke and certain cancers, such as cervical and breast cancer, while it is being taken. But since it was introduced in 1961 there has been disquiet about what effects the Pill might continue to have years after a woman comes off it.
Significantly, most of the women in the study were taking medium or high oestrogen dose pills that were common in the 1960s and 1970s.
Today only 1 per cent of women take medium-dose contraceptive pills. The rest use low-dose pills, which are believed to be safer.
Dr Clifford Kay, founding director of the Royal College of General Practitioners' Manchester Research Unit, who started the study in 1968, said the results must be reassuring. "There probably has always been a lurking fear that something dreadful might pop out of the woodwork after 15, 20 or even 25 years, and this study shows clearly that it hasn't."
He said the increased death-rate among women taking the Pill was very small and generally related to other risk factors such as family medical history.
Their average age at the start of the study was 25 and at the end 50. Over 25 years, 1,599 deaths were recorded. Of these, a total of 829 women died of cancer, including 259 from breast cancer, and 380 from heart disease and strokes. Ten or more years after Pill users stopped taking oral contraceptives, their mortality rate was similar to that of those who had never taken it.
The average length of time a woman stays on the Pill today is two years, but most of the women studied were taking it for five.
Dr Jones of the IFPA said it was important for women with a history of blood clotting, blood pressure or breast cancer to consult their doctor about taking the Pill.
She said smoking exacerbated the risk of thrombosis for users. Oral contraceptives are known to have some beneficial effects, such as reducing risk of ovarian cancer. The researchers said there was some hint in the findings this protective effect disappeared when women stopped taking the Pill.
Prof Valerie Beral, director of the UK-based Imperial Cancer Research Fund's cancer epidemiology unit in Oxford and the study's chief investigator, said the main finding was extremely simple. "Ten or more years after stopping the Pill former users have the same death rates as never-users of the Pill."
This result was extremely important, she said, because it related to women in their 40s and 50s, when they get to an age where cancer starts becoming common. "What these results mean is that we can reassure women that if they stopped the Pill 10 or more years ago and they get some illness, it's not because they took the Pill when they were young. We can also assure women taking low-dose pills that there won't be any persistent effects as they are growing older."
A scare in 1995, when some Pill brands were linked with blood clots, was blamed for frightening many women away from oral contraceptives. In the following nine months in the UK there were some 10,000 abortions - the highest recorded rate.