Earlier this month, the US Food and Drug Administration approved a new type of emergency contraceptive that is effective for up to five days after sex. That drug should prove invaluable at preventing unwanted pregnancy because it seems that little — including new technology — can get many women on the Pill to stick to their daily regimen of oral contraceptives, a small study has found.

A team of doctors from the Boston University School of Medicine electronically tracked 82 young women’s usage of the Pill for three months, half of whom received daily reminders by text message. Reporting in the September issue of the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, the researchers found that the SMS reminders made absolutely no difference: women in either group missed an average of five pills per monthly cycle.

Although there were no pregnancies in this particular trial, studies have shown that nearly one in ten women conceive while on the Pill because of such imperfect use of birth control. Responding to this problem, Anna Glasier, director of family planning and well woman services at National Health Service Lothian in Edinburgh, argued in the May issue of Nature Medicine that more women should consider foolproof, no-memory-required methods such as contraceptive implants and intrauterine devices. (The New York Times also reported on long-term birth control options on Saturday.)

Newer techniques might also be on the way to replace daily pill popping. For example, as we reported in our May news feature, researchers are working on an easy-to-apply transdermal gel that gets absorbed through the skin.

We’re still learning about the Pill, however. A small, preliminary study published in the August issue of the journal Brain Research found that the brains of women on the Pill were around 3% larger than those of women not using contraceptives — though there’s no evidence the link is causal. There are some scientific uncertainties about oral contraception, including the extent to which it increases the risk of stroke. What we do know, however, is that it does not work if it stays in the bottle.

Image: Wikimedia Commons