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The risk of blood clot formation is one of the possible effects of the pill, which is much more common than the AstraZeneca vaccine, under fire due to a possible association, yet to be confirmed, with thromboembolic events. But, according to current knowledge, there is no reason to be alarmed in either case.
The current investigation into a possible link between the AstraZeneca vaccine against covid-19 and the formation of blood clots detected in vaccinated people (the European Medicines Agency has ruled out, for now, a causal relationship) has again raised the comparisons with the risk of bringing drugs for banal use, such as the contraceptive pill.
The door was reopened last week by Silvestro Scotti, general secretary of the Italian Federation of Family Physicians and president of the Order of Physicians of Naples, who said that even if the correlation between the vaccine and blood clots was checked, the Risk rate It would be much lower, for example, that of the pill, “which is used a lot and does not concern anyone.” With the comparison he wanted to show that, although the vaccine carries risks, like any medicine, the benefit is “extraordinarily favorable”, as the World Health Organization and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) have reinforced today. But the parallel with a drug used by 151 million women of childbearing age worldwide (according to 2019 UN data) can be scary.
“The pill question had already been raised due to the increased risk of thromboembolism during covid-19 infection. But most women with rare covid have a hospital situation, they take anticoagulants due to the risk of infection and the fact that who are bedridden. And he does not do contraception, “recalls Teresa Bombas of the Portuguese Contraception Society, lamenting the” real implications “of some unclear information on the risks of the pill.” Women discontinue it. And then we have unintended pregnancies and we resort to abortion. “
Let’s go to the real risk. “In the general population, without contraception, under normal living conditions, four to six women out of 100,000 will have a thromboembolism. When we go to the population of women taking the pill, it becomes eight to ten “. I mean, the risk almost doubles, yet, “We are talking about an extremely rare event”, highlights the specialist in gynecology and obstetrics, adding that, in addition to many contraceptive methods, there are estrogen-free pills for women who are at risk of thromboembolism.
Important to say that it is safe
It is a matter of weighing the pros and cons: “The benefit we have of making contraceptives for women who are living their sex lives and do not want to get pregnant is substantially greater.” The important thing is to tell the population: it is safe “. And the same happens with the issue of vaccination, defends Teresa Bombas.
“Yes, maybe, during the vaccine, there are people who have thromboembolic events, but they would have them in real life regardless of whether they had the vaccine or not. We don’t know if it is necessarily something that increases the risk or if the events were going to happen. in any case “. And even if a cause / effect relationship is confirmed between the substance AstraZeneca and subsequent thromboembolisms (the EMA has not completely ruled out the hypothesis), “The advantages of doing the vaccine are immense compared to the number of people who can have a complication”.
Much greater than the thromboembolic risk associated with the vaccine and the pill is, for example, the risk associated with postpartum, which is “300 to 400 per 100,000”. “During pregnancy, the risk increases a lot, increases a lot. And we tell women not to have children because of this? No, we do enoxaparin [anticoagulante] women who have risk factors. “
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