FDA Panel OKs Birth Control Pills for Nonsmoking Women Over 40

A Food and Drug Administration advisory committee voted Thursday to recommend that healthy women over 40 who do not smoke be allowed to take birth control pills.

Current labeling suggests that women stop taking the pill at 40.

The committee voted to set no upper age limit on oral contraceptive use for nonsmokers who have no risk factors for heart disease. It voted to leave unchanged a recommendation that women who smoke stop taking birth control pills after they reach 35.

The earlier recommendation that women stop taking birth control pills at age 40 was based on several studies in the mid-1970s that found that taking oral contraceptives after 40 approximately doubled a woman’s chances of having a heart attack.

Thursday’s vote reflected the opinion of the FDA’s Fertility and Maternal Health Drugs Advisory Committee that the age limit is outdated. The studies that found an increased heart-attack risk were based on pills containing much higher levels of the hormone estrogen than pills used today.

No large studies have been done on women in their 40s who are taking modern lower-dose pills, so whether they increase the risk of heart attacks for women in this age group is unknown.

Several committee members said they thought the pills probably did elevate somewhat the risk of heart attacks for women in this age group but said they thought the benefits of oral contraceptives outweighed the risk.