Correction appended
A College of Medicine researcher recently found that continuous oral contraceptives, which allow women to skip periods, are more effective than the 28-day oral contraceptives in treating other conditions and improving quality of life.
Researcher Richard Legro compared the continuous contraceptive's effectiveness at suppressing the ovary against the typical 28-day birth control in a double-blind study that assigned 62 women to receive one of the two methods. Quality of life, bleeding, suppression of the ovary and the lining of the uterus were observed in each woman for six months.
Besides preventing pregnancy, birth control is also used to treat premenstrual syndrome, acne, body hair, endometriosis and hirsutism, Legro said.
"[Continuous contraceptive] is just a period of time off the hormone," said JoAnna Moyer, clinical manager of women's health at University Health Services. "It's a national trend to prescribe it on an ongoing basis for convenience."
Moyer said 28-day birth control is usually prescribed; however, continuous oral contraceptives can be prescribed by request and for therapeutic reasons.
"Sometimes there are good reasons to skip periods. If you don't have periods, you're not going to have the pain," she said. "It's very therapeutic, and we've been doing that for a long time."
In the study, the women who received continuous birth control reported less pain and behavioral changes than the women on the 28-day pill, but they also experienced more breakthrough bleeding.
"I was surprised by how much bleeding they had and that even though they had more spotting, their quality of life seemed to be better," Legro said.
With standard 28-day birth control, hormones are taken for 21 days and placebo pills are taken for the other seven, mimicking a woman's natural cycle. With continuous birth control, hormones are taken every day and a period is not experienced but "breakthrough bleeding" does occur, Legro added.
Although Legro's research indicates the benefits of continuous birth control, Moyer said the long-term effects of skipping periods for extended periods of time have not yet been investigated.
"Everywhere that we've looked at this, everybody's saying that we just don't know from good data the long-term effects. We have no reason to think that they are harmful because these are low-dose pills that we're using," Moyer said.
She said another thing that needs to be studied is the effect of the continuous pills on breasts because the pills deliver a continuous dose of estrogen.
"There's some concern that this might increase the risk of breast cancer," she said.
Another benefit of continuous birth control is that there is less of a penalty for forgetting to take a pill.
"With the 28-day pill, it's hard to suppress the ovary, and pregnancy can occur if you miss a pill," Legro said. "You have a cycle within a cycle and you're allowing the ovary to get back into action."
Researchers hope to do further research on the non-contraceptive uses of the pill, including treatment of endometriosis.
"You usually don't treat a condition 21 out of 28 days," Legro said. "The more I look at the research, the more the continuous pill makes sense."
This article incorrectly quoted Joanna Moyer. She said: "It is just a period of time off the hormone," referring to 28-day oral contraceptives.
