A recent study by researchers working out of Washington State has found that women who use either oral contraceptives (the pill) or injections of Depro-Provera as a means to prevent pregnancy face a greater risk of being infected with the HIV virus than do women who do not. The study, led by Renee Heffron, of the International Clinical Research Center at the University of Washington set out to discover why women in Africa who used hormonal contraceptives seemed to experience higher rates of HIV and AIDS. Heffron and her colleagues have published the results of their research in The Lancet – Infectious Diseases.
To find out what was going on, the group first sifted through the medical records of 4,000 women in seven African countries. They found that the incidence of HIV infections in women who used hormonal contraceptives was higher than it was for other women in the same areas. Next, assuming that the higher HIV incidence rate was due to higher rates of sex without benefit of a condom, the group began taking surveys of several groups of women in Africa, where the incidence of AIDs is higher than anywhere else. To their surprise, the women interviewed seemed to use condoms just as much as women who didn’t have access to hormonal contraceptives, which put a real dent in their theory.
Digging a little deeper the team next turned to medical researchers at the University of Washington to find out if there was something going on with women’s bodies who took hormonal contraceptives that made them able to more easily contract the virus, and lo and behold found exactly that. By comparing HIV positive patients in Washington state that had the virus but used no hormonal contraceptives, versus those that were HIV positive but also used hormonal contraceptives, the group found that the number of individual virus agents in the fluid in the vagina was significantly higher than in women who did not use a hormonal contraceptive, leading the researchers to wonder if such women were more likely to transmit the virus to a sexual partner. After further study, they found that to be true as well.
In summation, the group found that women who used hormonal contraceptives were more likely to contract the HIV virus if they had sex without a condom than women not using a hormonal contraceptive. In addition, they found that women who were both infected with the HIV virus and used a hormonal contraceptive were more likely to transmit the virus to a sexual partner than were women who were HIV positive but did not use a hormonal contraceptive.