Washington, DCYesterday was “Protest The Pill Day,” the annual day of action under the auspices of “thepillkills.com,” a grassroots organization attempting to educate women of all ages about the various risks associated with chemical-based oral contraceptives (The Pill). While all hormonal contraceptives carry some risk for blood clots (and many other risks, according to thepillkills.org), the newer generation contraceptives are thought to carry higher risks for blood clot and strokes. Contraceptives formulated with drospirenone have been buttonholed as particularly risky. Any talk of drospirenone must include Beyaz birth control, as the Bayer product contains drospirenone and is essentially Yaz dressed up in a different wrapper.
To be sure, all hormone-based contraceptives have carried a risk for blood clot since the very beginning. There have been and continue to be other risk factors that thepillkills.com would like you to know about, including a listing from the World Health Organization (WHO) of estrogen/progestogen oral contraception as a Group 1 cancer-causing agent. However, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), together with other health authorities around the world - including Health Canada and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) - have always believed that the benefits of pregnancy prevention outweigh the risks.
It’s the new-age birth control products, such as Beyaz birth control, that have really added to the concern over oral contraception. Manufacturers have been looking for ways to add value to their products and to address many of the concerns women have historically had with oral contraceptives, including bloating and weight gain, acne, cramping and other complaints.
They discovered the answer with drospirenone, a synthetic hormone that is found in Yasmin and Yaz, among others. Beyaz drospirenone is essentially Yaz with the addition of folate, a B vitamin that reduces the possibility of neural tube defects in children should a Beyaz user ever become pregnant (oral contraception is not 100 percent effective) or decide to be.
Added value is The Thing in birth control. All the advantages and protection against unwanted pregnancy, together with folate, reduced weight gain and reduced acne. The products have been a hit, not surprisingly, with young women.
But there have been problems, about which manufacturer Bayer emphatically denies. On its national day of action website, thepillkills.com references the suspicion that pills like Yaz and Yasmin are linked to the deaths of 23 Canadian women. “Most died suddenly from blood clots,” according to the site.
Dr. Angela Lanfranchi, of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, references Yasmin and Yaz (together with one other) in an undated video presentation posted on YouTube.
“There are pills that are even more likely to give you a pulmonary embolism. And actually, those are the ones that you’re hearing about on TV now; when lawyers advertise for clients who suffer heart attacks, strokes, pulmonary emboli or death, from the pill. And those two names are Yaz, Yasmin (and Ocella). And they contain third-generation progestins.”
And when you say Yaz, you also say Beyaz, as the two are essentially one and the same with the only difference being the addition of folate in Beyaz.
Lanfranchi, a breast cancer surgeon and clinical assistant professor of surgery at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, references a risk increase of anywhere from 60 to 80 percent for serious outcomes involving third-generation contraceptives such as Beyaz birth control, than the older, second-generation products.
The FDA also references Beyaz blood clots on its official web site. Under the heading “Beyaz (drospirenone/ethinyl estradiol/levomefolate calcium tablets and levomefolate calcium) tablets,” the drug regulator lists warnings and precautions for “Thromboembolic Disorders and Other Vascular Problems.”
“Based on presently available information on Yasmin, DRSP-containing COCs may be associated with a higher risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) than COCs containing the progestin levonorgestrel or some other progestins…”
Here, the FDA references Yasmin. But Yasmin is similar to Yaz in a slightly different formulation, and Yaz is Beyaz with folate.
They’re all third-generation, all based on drospirenone and all three of equal concern.
Like the others, the side effects of Beyaz can be devastating.
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