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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Letting women hit a year's cater of relationship curb pills strength help preclude more discarded pregnancies, a newborn think suggests.

Right now, clannish and public upbeat shelter plans in the U.S. generally bounds how whatever months' worth of relationship curb pills can be prescribed at once.

But researchers found that lower-income Calif. women who got a year's cater of the Pill had less unexpected pregnancies than women who got exclusive enough packages for one or threesome months at a time.

For every 1000 women who participated in the study, 10 in the longer-supply assemble became pregnant within a year, compared to 30 of those who could exclusive intend prescriptions for shorter supplies.

The think also showed that when doctors prescribed a full year's worth of pills, most digit of every 1000 women had a state-funded failure in the following year. But among women who had to come back every period or every threesome months for another medication of the pills, roughly sextet of every 1000 had a state-funded abortion.

The findings, reported in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, do not establish that individual lasting Pill prescriptions will preclude discarded pregnancies and abortions.

But that is what the results suggest, according to advance scientist Dr. Diana author Foster of the University of California, San Francisco.

"The implication of our uncovering is that upbeat programs and shelter policies would likely save money and improve calibre of tending by dispensing a year's supply," Foster told Reuters Health in an email.

As it stands, in Calif. and a whatever another states, publically funded programs permit lower-income women who do not otherwise remember for Medicaid intend a year's worth of relationship curb pills from a family-planning clinic, like Planned Parenthood (but not a pharmacy).

Women who do remember for Medicaid, however, start low that program's rules -- and most land Medicaid programs routinely bounds medication drugs to a roughly one-month supply, Foster said.

Nationwide, she noted, most three-quarters of U.S. women on relationship curb pills obtain no more than a three-month cater at a time.

Her think involved more than 84,000 lower-income women who conventional relationship curb pills through California's family-planning information in January 2006. About one in 10 conventional a one-year supply.

The think was not perfect. For one thing, it exclusive included women in California's Medi-Cal program, kinda than women from all walks of life. Also, the results would hit been more reliable had participants been arbitrarily (i.e., by chance) appointed to obtain a individual or shorter cater of pills.

The researchers did try to statement for factors that strength hit strained the results. For example, modify when they considered the women's age, vie and history of relationship curb use, getting a one-year cater was ease linked to a reduction in the odds of unexpected maternity and failure over the incoming year.

Foster said a year's cater of pills may earmark more women to take them without interruption.

"Or," she said, "it could be that being presented a year's cater may compound the expectation that the method is unexceptionable and safe, while less packs may encourage the blackamoor to reconsider ingest of the method at each re-supply visit."

Foster thinks upbeat plans' limits on relationship curb pills are belike meant to curb costs. If a blackamoor decides to kibosh using them over the course of a year, then whatever pills will go to waste.

But Foster and her colleagues judge that giving a year's cater to all the women in their think would hit prevented almost 1,300 pregnancies and 300 abortions paying for by the state.

A month's cater of relationship curb pills costs anywhere from $15 to $50, according to Planned Parenthood.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/g6Ztcr Obstetrics & Gynecology, March 2011.

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