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By Serena McNiff<\/b>
HealthDay Reporter<\/i><\/p>\n
WEDNESDAY, Aug. 19, 2020 (HealthDay News)<\/p>\n
Could birth control pills<\/a> build a bulwark against asthma<\/a>?<\/p>\n New research suggests that hormonal contraceptives, which alter the natural ebb and flow of female hormones, may do just that.<\/p>\n A study of more than half a million women in the United Kingdom found that those who used hormonal contraceptives — be it pills or patches or shots — had a significantly lower risk of developing asthma<\/a> than women who did not.<\/p>\n Female hormones have a mysterious relationship with asthma<\/a>. Asthma<\/a> is more common in boys than in girls during childhood, but after puberty<\/a> women are more at risk for developing asthma<\/a> and more likely to experience severe symptoms.<\/p>\n Every hormonal event in a female’s reproductive cycle — puberty<\/a>, menstruation<\/a>, pregnancy<\/a> and menopause<\/a> — has been shown to cause asthma<\/a>-related ripple effects in some women who already have asthma.<\/p>\n “We know that more than 40% of women who have asthma experience increased exacerbations during their menstrual cycle<\/a>, which points to the role of sex hormones,” said study author Bright Nwaru, of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.<\/p>\n Still, how hormones are related to asthma in women, and how hormonal contraceptives may alter that relationship, remains unclear.<\/p>\n According to Dr. Bruce Levy, chief of pulmonary and critical care at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, “There’s been a good bit of research, but I would say no definitive mechanism has been identified. I think most general practitioners, as well as specialists, are aware of this phenomenon, but why this occurs is still to be determined.”<\/p>\n Prior research on the impact of hormonal birth control<\/a> on asthma development has been inconsistent, and this study was one of the first large-scale investigations to look into this relationship.<\/p>\n Dr. Paul Greenberger is an allergist at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. He said, “There’s been a focus on this area over the years, but it’s not fully understood. So, that’s why this is an intriguing study.”<\/p>\n One theory is that hormones play a role in the inflammation that narrows airways in patients with asthma, Greenberger said.<\/p>\n While Levy noted that this study can’t prove that taking hormonal contraceptives prevents asthma, it does reveal a strong connection.<\/p>\n “This is an association — it’s not proven, and it has to be presented with some acknowledgment that it’s not proof,” Levy said.<\/p>\n Nwaru and an international team of researchers derived the data for this study from a large, British-based health database. They tracked more than 500,000 women, aged 16 to 45, from 2000 through 2016. Throughout the study, around 25,000 of the women developed asthma.<\/p>\n After adjusting the data for factors such as obesity<\/a> and smoking<\/a>, which could muddy the results, the investigators found that women who used any type of hormonal contraceptives were at a 30% lower risk of developing asthma than women who didn’t.<\/p>\n And the benefit was greater for women who used it for longer — women who took hormonal contraceptives for seven years were less at risk than those who used them for three to four years, or one to two years.<\/p>\n “This adds another layer of importance to the observation,” Levy said. “It’s another line of evidence to suggest that this is not just a random association that happened to be found by chance, but that this is something that appears to be related to the duration of time that the birth control pills<\/a> are used.”<\/p>\n In the study, published online recently in the Journal of Allergy<\/a> & Clinical Immunology<\/i>, the authors noted that more research is needed to better understand the relationship between female hormones and asthma.<\/p>\n Nwaru’s team also added that this topic should be investigated through a clinical trial to see if the results of this study can be confirmed in a controlled setting.<\/p>\n “Our findings do not suggest any changes in current management guidelines of asthma, but indicate the need for more confirmatory studies [e.g. clinical trials<\/a>] to provide confirmation of our findings,” Nwaru said.<\/p>\n While it is unlikely that doctors will be prescribing birth control<\/a> pills to prevent asthma anytime soon, further research could potentially lead to a hormone-based therapy for the prevention<\/a> of asthma, the study team suggested.<\/p>\n![\"MedicalNews\"](\"https:\/\/images.medicinenet.com\/images\/HealthDay\/healthday.png\")
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