New Cochrane Review

08 Mar New Cochrane Review

1. COVID disease, Combined Hormonal Contraceptives & VTE. Lead Author: Dr. Megan Cohen (this is a “living” systematic review which is for emerging acute topics and enables us to utilize any type of available literature) https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD014908/full/es . As expected, the evidence is of very low to low quality. However, we also didn’t see a concerning signal.

The Key findings are as follows:

• One study reported similar risks of dying from COVID‐19 among people using combined hormonal birth control and those people not using it, but the evidence was very uncertain.
• Based on results from one study, there may be a slightly decreased risk of hospitalization with COVID‐19 for people who use combined hormonal birth control, but the evidence was very uncertain. Results from a smaller study found that there may be little to no effect of using any type of hormonal birth control on risk of hospitalization for people with COVID‐19 disease, but the evidence was very uncertain.
• Using hormonal birth control may have little to no effect on risk of needing a breathing tube for people with COVID‐19 disease, but the evidence is very uncertain.
• Reports describing a series of 13 women and girls with COVID‐19 that had blood clots found that two of the people used combined hormonal birth control.
• We did not find any evidence on risk of heart attack or stroke for users of hormonal birth control with COVID‐19 disease.
• We did not find any evidence for any outcome for people with COVID‐19 using combined hormonal birth control as compared to those using birth control containing progestin hormone only.
• Overall there were few studies we were able to include and they all had serious design issues that made it very difficult to interpret the evidence. The evidence was very uncertain about the risk of clotting‐related harms for people with COVID‐19 who use hormonal birth control. There may be similar or reduced risk of being hospitalized for people who use hormonal contraception.

2.       Progestin versus Copper Intrauterine devices for emergency contraception. Lead Author: Dr. Shaalini Ramanadhan     https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD013744.pub2/full/es?highlightAbstract=for%7Ciud%7Cfour%7Cec%7Caec

The Key findings are as follows:

• The current evidence does not provide definitive evidence on the effectiveness of LNG‐IUD for EC.
• More comparative studies are needed to see if the LNG‐IUD is as effective as the Cu‐IUD for EC.