No method of birth control is 100 percent accurate, and the morning-after pill is no exception. In fact, emergency contraception varies in effectiveness, lowering your chance of getting pregnant by 75 to 89 percent if you take it within 3 days of unprotected sex. It’s not a bad stat, but there’s definitely room for growth. Well, we have good news: a new study out of the University of Hong Kong may have found one way to make the emergency contraceptive pill even more effective, and it involves a simple painkiller.
The study, published last month in The Lancet, found that taking a particular non-steroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID) painkiller along with the morning-after pill increased the effectiveness of the pill by over 30 percent (!).
The research group behind the study worked with 860 women who got the morning-after pill (aka levonorgestrel) from a community sexual and reproductive health service in Hong Kong within three days of unprotected sex. The women were split into two groups: one group received the pill and piroxicam, a prescription anti-inflammatory painkiller used for arthritis pain, and the other received the morning-after pill and and placebo. The researchers then followed up with the women one or two weeks after their next expected period to determine whether they became pregnant.
The numbers were low overall, but the difference was significant: one woman in the pill-plus-piroxicam group became pregnant, versus seven in the pill-plus-placebo group. Those results showed that the morning-after pill and piroxicam taken together prevented 94.7 percent of expected pregnancies, versus 63.4 percent with the pill and placebo. That’s a whopping 31.3 percent difference in effectiveness with the addition of one more medication, with no significant difference in side effects (like changes to your period or stomach pain after taking the pill).
Why did the piroxicam help? The medication is designed to block the body’s production of prostaglandin, a press release from the University of Hong Kong stated. Prostaglandins are produced by most human body tissues in order to “mediate a number of biological processes, including inflammatory responses.” In the reproductive system specifically, prostaglandin mediates “processes like ovulation, fertilization, and embryo implantation.” Stopping the body from producing prostaglandin, therefore, had a “complementary effect” on the morning-after pill in helping to prevent pregnancy.
Piroxicam is only available by prescription in the US, per Mayo Clinic, though you can buy other anti-inflammatory medications (such as Advil) right off your drugstore shelves. While it’s not clear whether those lower-dose medications would increase the effectiveness of morning-after pills the way piroxicam does (and you should ask your doctor or pharmacist before pairing them up), the study definitely opens up new avenues of research — and, potentially, new guidelines for emergency contraception.
“Our study is the first to find that piroxicam, a readily available medication, taken at the same time as the levonorgestrel pill can prevent more pregnancies than levonorgestrel alone,” chief investigator Dr. Raymond Li Hang-wun said in the press release. “We hope these findings will lead to further research and ultimately changes in clinical guidelines to enable women around the world to access more effective emergency contraception.”
Before you go, check out our favorite period products to make your cycle a little more bearable:
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