The Difference in the Severity of Premenstrual Symptoms between Users and Non-users of Oral Contraceptives.

Oral contraceptives (OC) are very a widely prescribed therapy for premenstrual symptoms yet, only a limited number of studies have explored the relationship between OC and numerous premenstrual symptoms. The aim of this study was to investigate the differences in retrospectively reported premenstrual symptoms between users and non-users of oral contraceptives. In total 385 women (186 OC-users and 199 non OC-users) participated in this study. Premenstrual symptoms were assessed with Woman’s Daily Health Diary. Online data collection was used. A series of analysis (multivariate analysis of variance, t-tests and descriptive statistics) were performed in order to investigate the differences in severity of symptoms between two groups of women. Results have shown that there is a significant difference between OC-users and non OC-users in the overall level of premenstrual symptoms (t(383)=4.29, p<0.001, d=0.44) with OC-users reporting fewer symptoms. The differences between two groups of women were also found with respect to physical (t(383)=5.13, p<0.001, d=0.48), and psycho-emotional symptoms (t(383)=3.21, p<0.001, d=0.34), concentration (t(383)=2.74, p=0.006, d=0.28) as well as appetite-related (t(383)=3.57, p<0.001, d=0.57) and sleep-related problems (t(383)=3.08, p=0.002, d=0.33), with OC-users reporting less severe disturbances in all those categories. No difference was found in regards to well-being (t(383)=0.60, p=0.546) or sexual functioning (t(383)=0.34, p=0.734) between two groups of women. Findings of this study suggest that OC-users in comparison to non-users suffer from fewer premenstrual symptoms.