Long-term oral contraceptive treatment, metabolic syndrome and measures of cardiovascular risk in pre-menopausal women: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 19992004

Aim. Differences in subclinical cardiometabolic measures were examined as a function of oral contraceptive pills OCP treatment duration to compare never-treated women with four OCP-treatment groups <1, 15, 510 and >10 years. Methods. The NHANES 19992004 database was used to evaluate 2089 healthy, pre-menopausal women, aged 1855 years, with or without OCP history, no other hormonal treatment or history of systemic conditions. Outcome measures included body mass, central obesity, blood pressure, glycemia, insulinemia, lipid profile and inflammation. Analyses evaluated differences in prevalence of Metabolic Syndrome MetS, constituent MetS and other clinical risk criteria, as well as outcome magnitudes. Analyses controlled for demographic and health-related variables, and study-eligible conditions. Results. Relative to other groups, women with >10 years OCP-use, and to some extent those with 510 years treatment, displayed no differences in prevalence of MetS and most risk criteria. Further analysis showed that, relative to women treated for <5 years, those with more prolonged OCP treatment displayed lower body mass and fasting glycemia with higher HDL-c levels, but more elevated LDL-c and total cholesterol. Conclusions. The findings of both beneficial and detrimental subclinical cardiometabolic differences with more long-term OCP-treatment reinforces the need to monitor changes in these factors within the context of the treated patient's risk-benefit profile. However, because the magnitude of these differences was small, relative to normative ranges, it may be concluded that OCPs, as used in recent decades, are unlikely to markedly affect cardiometabolic risk.