Merck, the makers of Nuvaring, have announced that they will settle the lawsuits pending against them from women who claim harm from using the ring. It may be a wise business decision, but surprising given the two recent studies that, unlike the large Danish study published in 2012, find no increased blood clot risk among new users of the Nuvaring compared to women who use older birth control pills.
I’ve updated my prior post on the Ring to address the newer more reassuring data, and point you to this wonderfully written article in the NPR Shots blog for the best summary of the evidence and opinion to date.
Bottom Line
All estrogen containing contraceptives can increase the risk of blood clots. Nuvaring’s risk may or may not be higher than that of older pills containing the protesting levonorgestrel, and more in line with that from desogesterel or drosperinone (YAZ, Yasmin) containing pills. However, the preponderance of data at this point suggest that the ring’s risks are not higher than that of older pills. Time (and perhaps more studies) will tell if this will change.
For women unable or unwilling to accept the small but real risk for clots from using estrogen containing contraceptives, there are plenty of great, and sometimes even more effective, methods out there – IUDs, progesterone only pills, shots and implants.
I’m really saddened to hear your reassuring comments about NuvaRing. Saddened because my daughter died of blood clots in her lungs while she was on NuvaRing, and the idea of some other woman suffering blood clots and/or dying just makes me want to cry. There are still a lot of issues about the delivery system of NuvaRing – the estrogen spikes, storage issues relating to temperature. My daughter was not a new user to NuvaRing. Why even use a birth control with third, or fourth, generation hormones that some studies show have the higher risk. I’d like to tell all women – Do not take that risk. You may think it’s a small risk, but there are safer methods of birth control out there.