Birth Control Pills May Alter a Woman’s Brain?

A new study highlights subtle changes in the neural structures of women taking different kinds of Birth Control Pills over the long term.

About a week ago, Platzer et al out of the Center for Neurocognitive Science at the University of Salzburg, Austria published a very interesting bit of research. At this point, it is nothing more than a curiosity. However, I can imagine my significant other getting a hold of this report and oh-so-sweetly use it to cement her feeling of mental superiority over me saying, “See Vinny, more evidence!”

The paper was published online in the journal ‘Brain Research’ (doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2014.11.025) and is titled ‘Differential effects of androgenic and anti-androgenic progestins on fusiform and frontal grey matter volume and face recognition performance’.

Reading that could be a rather dry chore for most, so I thought I’d share it with all of you and do a bit of armchair analysis.

The article begins by referencing earlier work where brain scans were compared between large groups of women who had been on oral contraceptives (OCs) for a long time and women who had not used them at all. Earlier research showed increased volumes of grey matter in certain parts of the brain (the prefrontal cortex being one very interesting spot they studied).

This team’s spin on the research was to look at the effects of different kinds of OCs on a woman’s brain.

The two main groups they divided OCs into were:

• Androgenic progestins, like norethindrone acetate, the progestin present in
  Loestrin
• Antiandrogenic progestins, like cyproterone acetate, the progestogen in Dianette

The results were pretty astonishing when taken at face value:

Users of antiandrogenic progestins showed enhanced facial recognition performance. Women who used drugs liked Dianette seemed to be better at recognizing faces. The quality of increased facial recognition seemed to be related to increased thickness and density of grey matter in the fusiform face area (a part of the brain that helps with facial recognition); the longer the use of OCs, the higher the increase in grey matter!

Interestingly, the exact opposite was seen in users of OCs that contained norethindrone, lower grey volumes, slower facial recollection and the works.

Quite fascinating, isn’t it? Cyproterone and its ilk make women better at recognizing faces.

However, is it as cut and dried as proven?

Not exactly, as there are a number of confounding factors in the study.

Age is a big one. The antiandrogen OCs are newer and used on a much younger patient population in general while androgen OC users are aging and the drugs have generally been phased out of routine use now a days. Therefore, the androgenic users with the worsening facial recognition are likely to be older than the antiandrogen users. The advancing age could mean that the regions of the brain that were studied may have thinned out as part of the natural aging process, so the drugs may have nothing to do with it! All we may be looking at is differently aged OC users who happen to use different types of OCs, based on their popularity with the medical community, through the years.

Whatever the case may be, new research is opening our eyes to the potential long term effects of many different kinds of drugs and their effect on the brain. This particular piece of research may or may not be substantiated further, but it is an eye opener nonetheless.