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Concern about the risks of cardiovascular illness in women using combined oral contraceptives (OC) containing the progestagens desogestrel and gestodene prompted two studies of data from the UK General Practice Research Database. We compared the risks of certain cardiovascular illnesses in otherwise healthy women exposed to one of three OCs containing <35 μg oestrogen plus levonorgestrel, desogestrel, or gestodene.

In the first study, based on some 470 general practices, there were 15 cases of unexpected idiopathic cardiovascular death among 303 470 women who were current users of one of the study OCs. The estimated incidence rates were 8/184 536 (4·3 per 100 000) woman-years at risk for users of combined OCs containing levonorgestrel, 2/135567 (1·5 per 100 000) for desogestrel users, and 5/105 201 (4·8 per 100 000) for gestodene users. The relative risk (RR) estimates were 0·4 (95% Cl …