The contraceptive pill thousands of women want banned due to its severe side effects – including fatal blood clots
More than 3.5 million women in the UK take hormonal contraception pills, and Rigevidon is a newer, cheaper alternative to the oral combined pill Microgynon regularly doled out by GPs.
But in May 2015, 483 women turned up at Tamworth’s family planning clinic in Staffordshire demanding to be taken off their contraceptive. The reason given by one patient was that it had just killed her best friend.
The friend in question was 20-year-old Fallan Kurek, a teaching assistant taking the pill to help with her irregular, painful periods.
Less than a month after she switched to Rigevidon, Fallan was rushed to hospital with breathing problems and died three days later in intensive care.
Her grieving mum and dad said the contraceptive pill, which she had been taking for 25 days, was to blame for their daughter’s death – and a coroner ruled that Fallan died from a pulmonary embolism after side-effects of the pill were not noticed or effectively treated.
In 2016 a young nanny claimed the Rigevidon pill made her suffer an early onset stroke after the medication allegedly caused a blood clot on her brain.
Laura Ephraums, now 22, of Ottery Saint Mary, Devon, had been taking the pill for eight weeks before her illness and spent a week in hospital recovering from the terrifying ordeal.
She went on to launch an appeal to have Rigevidon banned from the NHS. Her petition on Change.org has garnered 27,076 supporters.
These are not isolated cases. Many women have taken to the internet to report suffering awful side effects as a result of taking Rigevidon.
A post in The Student Room about Rigevidon from 2015 is still being added to three years later. The woman who started the thread wrote: “This pill is making me crazy. What I want to know is if anyone else has experienced this same thing on Rigevidon or any other pill?”
Chelsea Lawton, who responded to the tread, told Cosmopolitan that Rigevidon caused her to have "extreme sickness, headaches and irregular bleeding" as well as bad anxiety and depression to the point where she didn't want to leave the house.
She came off it and said she finally feels like herself again.
Another woman anonymously told Cosmopolitan that she "suffered from a clot in my brain in 2014 due to this pill", adding: "I didn’t realise it was so common."
What is the contraceptive pill?
The combined oral contraceptive pill – known as 'the pill' – prevents pregnancy and is around 99 per cent reliable – if taken correctly at the same time every day.
It contains artificial hormones that mimic naturally occurring oestrogen and progesterone in women.
The pill aims to prevent pregnancy by keeping eggs and sperm apart, or stopping the release of an egg during ovulation.
Pregnancy can be avoided as the pill can cause the ovaries to stop releasing eggs.
It also thickens the mucus in the womb to make it difficult for sperm to reach eggs if they are released.
The lining of the womb is also thinned, so if an egg is fertilised, it will find it difficult to attach to the wall of the womb and therefore cannot grow into a fetus.
There are three different type of pills:
Monophasic pills
This means you take the pill for 21 days, followed by a 7 day gap of none, where you will likely have a bleed.
Phasic pills
These contain sections of different coloured pills in a pack.
Each section contains a different amount of hormones – so they must be taken in order.
Once the 21 pills are gone, you have a 7 day gap.
Every day pills
These packs contain 21 active pills that contain hormones and seven dummy pills that are inactive. The pills must be taken in order and you take 28 without a gap between packets.
I myself suffered from an outbreak of melasma – a benign skin condition characterised by hyperpigmentation – on my face while taking Rigevidon. Since switching pills my symptoms have reduced dramatically.
Rigevidon is a contraceptive pill containing 30 mcg Ethinylestradiol (the hormone oestrogen) and 150 mcg Levonorgestrel (the hormone progesterone). In terms of its hormone content, it's identical to other pills which have been on the market for decades, including Microgynon and Ovranette.
While it is pharmacologically identical to other contraceptive pills, gynaecologist Dr Anne Henderson warned Cosmopolitan that "the additional constituents in Rigevidon, such as the binding agents which help form a stable pill, may be the issue. Even slight variations in the pharmacology of the combined pill such as this could impact on the way in which the pill is absorbed and thus any potential side effects".
She reported an anecdotal rise in concerns among women prescribed the pill at her own practice.
In April 2017, we told how research showed tablets containing ethinylestradiol — synthetic oestrogen — and levonorgestrel, both found in Microgynon and Rigevidon, are making women miserable.
A team at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, gave real pills or placebos to 340 women aged 18 to 35 for three months. None knew which group they were in, but those taking the drugs said their mood, sense of well-being and energy levels were dragged down, while their self-control was also hit.
There has long been speculation and hype over blood clot risks in contraceptive pill users, but the risk has always been apparent, but small.
The NHS comments on their website: "12 women per 10,000 taking combined contraceptives are thought to be at risk of having a blood clot in any given year."
They added: "This compares with two cases of blood clots in the veins each year per 10,000 women who are not using combined contraceptives."
Following Fallan's death, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency – which regulates the drug – insisted the pill is safe and that women should continue to take it.
A spokesperson said: “Women should continue to take their contraceptive pill.
“These are very safe, highly effective medicines for preventing unintended pregnancy and the benefits associated with their use far outweigh their risks.”
The Sun Online has reached out to the manufacturer of Rigevidon, Gedeon Richter, for comment.
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