Birth Control Pill Warning

Birth-control pills with drospirenone linked to higher risk of blood clots.
Bloomberg News (4/22, Hallam) reports, "Women who use birth-control pills made with the hormone drospirenone, such as Bayer AG (BAYN)'s Yasmin, are three times more likely to develop blood clots than those who take an older oral contraceptive," according to two studies published in the British Medical Journal.
MedPage Today (4/21, Walsh) reported that, for the first study, researchers "analyzed data from the longitudinal US PharMetrics database, identifying 186 cases of thromboembolism among women using these agents between 2002 and 2008. They compared these cases with 681 controls that were matched for year of birth and index date."
HealthDay (4/21, Gardner) reported, "Those taking the newer pill had a 2.3 times greater risk for a blood clot. The absolute risk, however, was still small -- 30.8 per 100,000 among those taking drospirenone, compared to 12.5 per 100,000 in women taking levonorgestrel." The second study looked at "similarly aged women in the United Kingdom and found a three-fold elevated risk for blood clots among women taking the newer version of the pill. That translated to 23 per 100,000 women in the drospirenone group and 9.1 per 100,000 women in the levonorgestrel group."