GENContracept test

Are you using contraception pills? Caution!

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European Medicines Agency implemented a new recommendation related to hormonal contraceptives regulations, available on HALMED (Agency for Medicinal Products and Medical Devices of Croatia) web pages. The mentioned recommendation strongly suggests that it is important to inform users of hormonal contraceptives about the risk of venous thromboembolism (developing blood clots in veins), which has been in connection to the usage of hormonal contraceptives.

Since the usage of hormonal contraceptives is accompanied by the risk of developing blood clots, the recommendation stresses that it is very important to precisely measure level of the risk for every woman individually, taking into consideration all the individual factors of risk.

Genetic predisposition increases the risk when contraceptives are used.

It is known that some women have genetic predisposition for developing blood clots. Presence of the genetic predisposition, combined with usage of hormonal contraceptives may increase the risk of developing blood clots several times.

Most common inherited predisposing factors for developing blood clots are genetic changes (mutations) in clotting factors: factor V (Leiden) and factor II (prothrombin).

Plenty of evidence shows that taking hormonal contraceptives is accompanied by increased risk of developing venous thromboembolism among women who already have genetic predisposition, determined by genes for factor II and factor V. A number of research have been carried out in this field, and one of them has shown that consuming oral contraceptives represents 5 times more risk for developing blood clots; furthermore, this risk is even 32 times bigger for women who both take oral contraceptives and have the mutation in the gene for factor V.