Since its Second Coming of Christ 50 years ago , the lozenge has helped revolutionise contraception and transmute charwoman ’s lives . The pill is so pop today that over100 million womenworldwide currently use this method of contraception , and the majority of user reporthigh levels of gratification .

Many women , however , go through unpleasant side effects , ranging from temper alteration toandrogenic result , such as acne and undesirable hair growth . The latter are cause by the fact that some progestin ( the semisynthetic versions of the hormone progesterone used in oral contraceptives)interact with androgen receptors . The androgens , such as testosterone , are steroid hormones that are creditworthy for manful characteristics . Some progestins have high androgenic activity and therefore increase the chances of androgenic hormone - interrelate side effects , but many more modernistic tablet actually wield anti - androgenic effects .

Over the years , many written report have scrutinized these side event , but the focusing of the absolute majority of these study has been onmetabolic and emotional effects . A few studies also wait at effects on cognitive tasks , and some found that the pill is colligate with memory variety , raise verbal and recognition retention . The possible effects on mastermind structure and role , however , have been largely ignored , despite the fact that the steroid hormone from which many progestins were infer has been demonstrate to induce changes in the learning ability .

A few years back , a study aimed to address this gap in our knowledge anddiscoveredthat substance abuser of oral preventative had big volumes of grey matter ( Einstein tissue consist of boldness cellular phone bodies ) in certain areas of the brain . However , they fail to take into account the androgenic activity ( androgenicity ) of the progestin or control for years differences .

Building on this oeuvre , scientist from the University of Salzberg enrolled 60 women into a unexampled study . 20 of the participant were of course motorcycle , i.e. not taking unwritten contraceptives ( OCs ) , 18 were using OCs containing androgenic progestins , and 22 were take OCs contain anti - androgenic progestins .

As described inBrain Research , after controlling for old age , MRI scan revealed that cleaning lady using anti - androgenic progestins had importantly large gray matter volumes in several brain regions when compared with naturally cycle women . These brain areas include the hippocampus , which is involved in learning and memory , and the fusiform expression area ( FFA ) , which is thought to be differentiate for facial acknowledgment . moreover , they found that volume increased with duration of employment , i.e. the longer women had been take the tablet , the greater the gray-haired topic volume in these area . char taking androgenic progestins , however , had humble gray subject volume in sure brain region when compared with naturally cycling women .

Next , they asked women to participate in a facial recognition test , which revealed that these observed change were related to task performance . For the task , charwoman were presented with 30 fount , 15 male and 15 female , for 3 irregular , and asked to memorize them . Next , they were point 60 photos , which included the 30 previous photos and 30 antecedently unseen photos , and expect to indicate which ones they had visualize before .

The researchers discover that women taking anti - androgenic progestins do significantly better than member of the other two groups , and that performance was related to the grey matter volume in the FFA .

direct together , this study suggests that androgenic and anti - androgenic progestogen may exercise differential effects on brain bodily structure . However , this study is limit by the fact that a small sampling size was used , and the fact that it is not potential to distinguish which compound   in the combined oral prophylactic equipment could be inducing these effect .