Side Effects and Safety
The Pill does not protect against HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases.
Unscheduled bleeding or spotting is likely to occur while you are taking LYBREL®. Unscheduled bleeding or spotting occurs most often during the first six months of LYBREL use. This usually decreases over time. For some women, this may continue, but regardless of any unscheduled breakthrough bleeding and spotting, LYBREL remains highly effective birth control.
Some women should not use the Pill, including women who have blood clots; breast, uterine, or liver cancers; a history of heart attack, stroke, or breast cancer; as well as those who are or may be pregnant.
Serious risks associated with the Pill that can be life threatening include blood clots, stroke, and heart attacks and are increased if you smoke cigarettes.
Cigarette smoking increases the risk of serious adverse effects on the heart and blood vessels from oral contraceptive use, especially if you are over 35. Women who use the Pill are strongly advised not to smoke.
LYBREL provides women with more hormonal exposure on a yearly basis (13 additional weeks of hormone intake per year) than conventional cyclic oral contraceptives containing the same strength of synthetic estrogens and similar strength of progestins.
Because regular monthly bleeding does not occur on LYBREL, it may be difficult to recognize if you get pregnant. If you suspect that you may be pregnant, or if you have symptoms of pregnancy such as nausea/vomiting or unusual breast tenderness, you should have a pregnancy test and you should contact your health care professional.
The most common side effects reported with LYBREL in a clinical trial were headache, menstrual cramps, upper respiratory infection, vaginal bleeding, and nausea.
As with all oral contraceptives, women may experience weight gain or weight loss.
If any of the following side effects occur while you are taking an oral contraceptive like LYBREL, call your health care professional immediately:
- Sharp chest pain, coughing of blood, or sudden shortness of breath (indicating a possible clot in the lung)
- Pain in the calf (indicating a possible clot in the leg)
- Crushing chest pain or heaviness in the chest (indicating a possible heart attack)
- Sudden severe headache or vomiting, dizziness or fainting, disturbances of vision or speech, weakness, or numbness in an arm or leg (indicating a possible stroke)
- Sudden partial or complete loss of vision (indicating a possible clot in the eye)
- Breast lumps (indicating possible breast cancer or fibrocystic disease of the breast; ask your health care professional to show you how to examine your breasts)
- Severe pain or tenderness in the stomach area (indicating a possibly ruptured liver tumor)
- Difficulty in sleeping, weakness, lack of energy, fatigue, or change in mood (possibly indicating severe depression)
- Jaundice or a yellowing of the skin or eyeballs, accompanied frequently by fever, fatigue, loss of appetite, dark-colored urine, or light-colored bowel movements (indicating possible liver problems)
For more information on the side effects and safety of LYBREL, download the Patient Information for LYBREL. (Requires Adobe® Reader®)
If you would like to have effective contraception with no regular monthly periods, talk with your health care professional about getting started with LYBREL.
If, like other women, you've decided to start using LYBREL, sign up for LYBREL LIVING™. It's a free informational program that lets you know what you can expect while taking LYBREL. It also provides you with tips and other information to help you weigh the convenience of having no regular monthly periods with the inconvenience of unscheduled breakthrough bleeding and spotting.
