(Press-News.org) Lack of data on contraception uptake prior to the pandemic means no clear picture of the impact Covid-19 had on contraception use
Study from Warwick Medical School highlights need to maintain access to contraception during disasters
Researchers recommend making more contraception prescription-free and discuss the benefits and pitfalls of telehealth
Limited data on the uptake of contraception prior to and during crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic could mean unforeseen issues for sexual and reproductive health services, research from the University of Warwick concludes.
It identifies additional barriers that women faced in accessing contraception during the Covid-19 lockdown, including disruption to sexual health services and fears about contracting the virus, as well as a pressing need to ensure that access to contraception is maintained to avoid the health and social impacts of unplanned pregnancies beyond the pandemic.
The research, published in the European Journal of Contraception and Reproductive Health Care, is a scoping review of existing research into the impact of disasters on contraception in higher income countries such as the United Kingdom to assist in disaster response planning. It aims to establish existing knowledge from previous disasters and epidemics, with a significant focus on the Covid-19 pandemic.
Previous research has shown that disasters are associated with increased rates of early pregnancy loss, stillbirth and premature birth, as well as with increased birth rates. However, until now there has not been a review of how the uptake of contraception is affected, and what impact this may have on women's reproductive health.
Policies on accessing contraception vary by country and include access to:
Oral contraceptive pills
Contraceptive injection
Intrauterine device (IUD) or Intrauterine system (IUS)
In the United Kingdom contraception is free through the NHS but requires a prescription. However, the Covid-19 pandemic created new barriers that may have prevented women from accessing contraception. They might avoid going to a healthcare provider due to the fear of contracting Covid-19, or concerns about travelling, especially if relying on public transport.
However, the research highlighted examples of good practice in overcoming these barriers, such as drive-through or kerbside provision of contraception. Some health providers were able to maintain access to contraception using telehealth (i.e. video or phone consultations), however these presented safeguarding and privacy issues. Evidence from outside the UK also showed that making emergency contraception prescription-free rather than cost-free has a greater impact on unplanned pregnancies.
As data were not collected on the uptake of contraception prior to the pandemic, it is unclear how successful these methods have been, nor how women's access to contraception has been affected. The researchers recommend collecting more data on the uptake of contraception, awareness of the benefits and pitfalls of telehealth methods, and a move to making more contraception prescription-free, as is currently being considered for the progestogen-only pills.
Co-author Dr Julia Gauly from Warwick Medical School said: "We don't have a clear picture of how the uptake of contraception changes during disasters or the Covid-19 pandemic, because we don't have enough data from before, during and after the crisis to compare. Collecting better data would put us in a better position in the future to predict things like birth rates.
"It's important that women can access contraception and have a choice, especially during disasters. Many people lost their jobs during the pandemic or they became sick with Covid, so the needs of women for contraception may have changed. Someone who was planning to start a family might change their mind during a crisis or pandemic, due to financial or health reasons. So it's important that women and their partners have a choice in their family planning."
INFORMATION:
'The impact of disasters on contraception in OECD member countries: a scoping review' is published in the European Journal of Contraception and Reproductive Health Care, DOI: 10.1080/13625187.2021.1934440 Link: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13625187.2021.1934440
Notes to editors:
For interviews contact:
Peter Thorley
Media Relations Manager (Warwick Medical School and Department of Physics) | Press & Media Relations | University of Warwick
Email: peter.thorley@warwick.ac.uk
Mob: +44 (0) 7824 540863
New research shows the UK's COVID-19 management decisions were based on an outdated pandemic modelling structure and suggests a more resilient approach would have been more effective.
In the initial months of the pandemic, regular updates using graphs showing how the R number was behaving was the mainstay of the Government's strategy for tackling COVID-19.
This type of infection transmission is usually mathematically-based on dividing the population into 'compartments'. Such an approach has been criticised for its limited scope and inability to capture critical factors, such as the ...
Results show BAT's Modern Oral nicotine pouches have a comparable toxicant profile to NRTs, which are currently considered the least risky of all nicotine products*†
The Modern Oral products have far fewer and significantly lower levels of toxicants‡ than cigarette smoke
Data demonstrates how BAT is building A Better Tomorrow™ by providing evidence to show how we are reducing the health impact of our business and delivering Tobacco Harm Reduction
London, 16 June: New research published today indicates that BAT's modern oral (MO) products in the form of tobacco-free nicotine pouches have a toxicant profile that is comparable to nicotine replacement therapies (NRTs) and much lower than traditional oral ...
CHAPEL HILL, NC - UNC School of Medicine scientists led a collaboration of researchers to demonstrate a potentially powerful new strategy for treating cystic fibrosis (CF) and potentially a wide range of other diseases. It involves small, nucleic acid molecules called oligonucleotides that can correct some of the gene defects that underlie CF but are not addressed by existing modulator therapies. The researchers used a new delivery method that overcomes traditional obstacles of getting oligonucleotides into lung cells.
As the scientists reported in the journal Nucleic Acids Research, they demonstrated the striking effectiveness of their approach in cells derived from a CF patient and in mice.
"With our oligonucleotide delivery platform, we were able to restore the activity of ...
Stuttgart/Boulder - It is not the first time that spiders have served as biological models in the research field of soft robotics. The hydraulic actuation mechanisms they apply to move their limbs when weaving their web or hunting for prey give them powers many roboticists and engineers have drawn inspiration from.
A team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Germany and at the University of Boulder in Colorado in the US has now found a new way to exploit the principles of spiders' joints to drive articulated robots without any bulky components and connectors, which weigh down the robot and reduce portability and speed. Their slender and lightweight simple ...
Magnetic-spin interactions that allow spin-manipulation by electrical control allow potential applications in energy-efficient spintronic devices.
An antisymmetric exchange known as Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions (DMI) is vital to form various chiral spin textures, such as skyrmions, and permits their potential application in energy-efficient spintronic devices.
Published this week, a Chinese-Australia collaboration has for the first time illustrated that DMI can be induced in a layered material tantalum-sulfide (TaS2) by intercalating iron atoms, and can further be tuned by gate-induced proton intercalation.
REALIZING AND TUNING DMI IN VAN-DER-WAALS MATERIAL TaS2
Searching ...
WASHINGTON --Just a small number of cells found in tumors can enable and recruit other types of cells nearby, allowing the cancer to spread to other parts of the body, report END ...
It sounds like a plot from a Quentin Tarantino movie -- something sets off natural killers and sends them on a killing spree.
But instead of characters in a movie, these natural killers are part of the human immune system and their targets are breast cancer tumor cells. The triggers are fusion proteins developed by Clemson University researchers that link the two together.
"The idea is to use this bifunctional protein to bridge the natural killer cells and breast cancer tumor cells," said Yanzhang (Charlie) Wei, a professor in the College of Science's Department of Biological Sciences. "If the two cells are brought close enough together through this receptor ligand connection, the natural killer cells can release what I call killing machinery to have the tumor cells killed."
It's ...
A group of researchers from the University of Jyvaskyla and Stanford University were part of an expedition to French Guiana to study tropical frogs in the Amazon. Various amphibian species of this region use ephemeral pools of water as their nurseries, and display unique preferences for specific physical and chemical characteristics. Despite species-specific preferences, researchers were surprised to find tadpoles of the dyeing poison frog surviving in an incredible range of both chemical (pH 3-8) and vertical (0-20 m in height) deposition sites. This research was published in the journal Ecology and Evolution in June 2021.
Neotropical frogs are special because, unlike species in temperate regions, many tropical frogs ...
Postdoctoral Researcher Outi Keinänen from the University of Helsinki developed a method to radiolabel plastic particles in order to observe their biodistribution on the basis of radioactivity with the help of positron emission tomography (PET). As a radiochemist, Keinänen has in her previous radiopharmaceutical studies utilised PET imaging combined with computed tomography (CT), which produces a very accurate image of the anatomical location of the radioactivity signal.
In the recently completed study, radiolabelled plastic particles were fed to mice, and their elimination from the body was followed with PET-CT scans. This was the first time that ...
Research published today in the Journal of General Virology has identified missed cases of SARS-CoV-2 by retrospective testing of throat swabs.
Researchers at the University of Nottingham screened 1,660 routine diagnostic specimens which had been collected at a Nottingham hospital between 2 January and 11 March 2020 and tested for SARS-CoV-2 by PCR. At this stage of the pandemic, there was very little COVID-19 testing available in hospitals, and to qualify patients had to meet a strict criterion, including recent travel to certain countries in Asia or contact with a known positive case.
Three previously unidentified cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection were identified by the retrospective screening, including one from a 75-year-old ...
