Blood fats: The pill irritates the liver
Christiane Fux studied journalism and psychology in Hamburg. The experienced medical editor has been writing magazine articles, news and factual texts on all conceivable health topics since 2001. In addition to her work for, Christiane Fux is also active in prose. Her first crime novel was published in 2012, and she also writes, designs and publishes her own crime plays.
More posts by Christiane Fux All content is checked by medical journalists.In women who take the pill, the blood lipid profile changes dramatically. So far this has been overlooked - because the decisive values are not measured at all.
So far, the doctor has only determined triglycerides and cholesterol, which provide indications of an impending arteriosclerosis. In fact, there are hundreds of different fats floating in the bloodstream. "Using modern analysis methods such as mass spectrometry, more than 280 different fat molecules can already be determined in the blood," says Prof. Jürgen Gräßler from the TU Dresden. However, it is not yet known which of these can provide important information about diseases.
Which values are normal?
The researcher and his team therefore worked with scientists from the Hemholtz Center in Dresden to determine the blood lipid profile of 72 young healthy men and women. Because if you want to find out which deviations are pathological, you first have to know what is healthy and normal.
But even with the healthy test persons, they encountered some surprises during the evaluations. Accordingly, it seems worrying how contraceptive pills change the lipoprofile.
Pill - serious effects on lipid metabolism
"We suddenly saw that the preparations that were previously considered harmless for the metabolism have a serious effect on lipid metabolism," says Gräßler. They attributed the dramatic changes that the researchers found in the women to irritation of the liver cells. Because the liver plays a central role in lipid metabolism. "This suggests a general increase in inflammatory activity," says Gräßler.
And this could have significant long-term health consequences. For example, chronically increased inflammatory activities promote the deposition of plaques in the vessels and thus promote a heart attack or stroke. And the risk of diabetes increases when the inflammatory activity in the body is continuously increased.
The effects of the pill on lipid metabolism and liver could also explain why women repeatedly report gaining weight after taking the pill.
Men - early signs of impaired metabolism
But the study also has unpleasant surprises in store for men: although all of them had healthy cholesterol and triglyceride levels, the more precise examination revealed early signs of a disturbed lipid metabolism in one in five of the men (and a few of the women).
The conclusion of the researchers: A determination of the blood lipids commonly used today may not be sufficient to detect imminent lipid metabolic disorders early and to take countermeasures.
The scientists also found significant differences between the lipoprofiles of men and women: 112 of the 281 blood lipid molecules measured differ significantly between the sexes. The researchers are therefore calling for the blood lipid patterns of men and women to be considered separately in the future.
Source: Susanne Sales et al .: Gender, Contraceptives and Individual Metabolic Predisposition
Shape a Healthy Plasma Lipidome; in: Scientific Reports 6, Article number: 27710, doi: 10.1038 / srep27710
