Last Thursday (13), a study suggested that the hormone dosage present in birth control pills can be reduced, without compromising effectiveness. Thus, it is possible to reduce the potential side effects.
The research team collected information on pituitary and ovarian hormone levels from 23 women, and used this data to create a mathematical model of the normal menstrual cycle, allowing it to predict daily hormone levels during a menstrual cycle and explore the effects of administering exogenous hormones at these levels.
The researchers recall that the most common contraceptive methods introduce synthetic hormones estrogen and progesterone into the bloodstream to prevent pregnancy, and through the technique established in the study, it was possible to predict the minimum dose of these hormones necessary to obtain contraception and the effects of the combination of estrogen and progesterone.
Modeling suggests that birth control pills can work effectively with much lower doses of estrogen or progesterone than are currently prescribed.
Hormone dosage can be reduced
“The results show that it is possible to reduce the total dose by 92% in estrogen monotherapy and 43% in progesterone monotherapy”, says the study. When both hormones are combined, even lower doses of each hormone may be sufficient to prevent the pregnancy.
The idea is to further investigate this discovery through future studies, under the premise of improving current contraceptives, an extreme need, considering the serious side effects, such as deep vein thrombosis.
Previously, American scientists disclosed the discovery of a way to use antibodies to act as a new female contraceptive, being 99.9% effective in “capturing” sperm. This is a hormone-free method that uses antibodies to “cancel” sperm.
Source: PLOS Computational Biology via Science Alert
