A team of scientists at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC) have led the way in contraception research. Not only did they show, just last year, that obese women receiving a progestin birth-control shot every three months may be at increased risk for developing type 2 diabetes, but now they’ve done it again with long-acting reversible contraception (LARC).
In their latest study into how contraception affects the overall wellbeing of overweight women, published in the journal Contraception, the team of researchers, led by Nicole M. Bender, assistant professor of clinical obstetrics and gynaecology at the Keck School, found that healthy, obese, reproductive-age women who use LARC containing the hormone progestin have a slightly increased risk for developing type 2 diabetes when compared to those who use non-hormonal contraception. They added that it still appears safe for use by such women, but does need further investigation.
In 2012, the Keck research partners studied the metabolic effects of other birth-control methods, finding that the wellness of obese women may also be at risk of developing type 2 diabetes, if they receive a progestin birth-control shot every three months. Penina Segall-Gutierrez, co-investigator of the study and an assistant professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology and family medicine at the Keck School commented, ‘Overall, we’re finding that methods such as the progestin injection and the progestin skin implant, which both have higher circulating progestin, may have an increased risk for metabolic changes compared to methods like the IUD, which only has a local effect ─ in the uterus.’
However, before you throw your progestin-releasing IUD out the window, Segall-Gutierrez added that it has other benefits. According to Segall-Gutierrez, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the use of the IUD for treating heavy menstrual bleeding, which often affects obese women, and the contraceptive also protects against endometrial cancer, which, again, disproportionately affects obese women.
Segall-Gutierrez concluded, ‘Choosing a birth-control method requires consideration of many factors, including the patient’s lifestyle and willingness to use the method, desire for future fertility, and risk for a host of diseases ─ diabetes and endometrial cancer being two of them for obese women. We would like to expand our most recent study by looking at more participants over a longer period of time to see if the metabolic effects we observed in the progestin-releasing implants persist or are only temporary.’
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