Do birth control pills and obesity increase the risk of multiple sclerosis?

Two new studies by American and Argentinean researchers have found out that hormonal birth control pills and obesity can increase the risk of development of multiple sclerosis (MS). According to AAN, These studies will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 66th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, April 26 to May 3, 2014.

Researchers from USA’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) identified 305 women who had been diagnosed with MS and compared their data with 305 healthy women who did not have MS. 29 percent of the women with diagnosed MS and 24 percent of those without MS had used hormonal contraceptives for at least three months in the three years before symptoms began. The study showed that women who had used hormonal birth control pills were 35 percent more likely to develop MS than those who did not use them. It’s also interesting that those who had used the contraceptives but had stopped about a month before symptoms started were 50 percent more likely to develop MS.

“These findings suggest that using hormonal contraceptives may be contributing at least in part to the rise in the rate of MS among women,” said study lead author Kerstin Hellwig, MD, from Bochum Germany, post-doctoral research fellow, Kaiser Permanente Southern California.

As for the link between MS and obesity, the researchers from Raul Carrera Institute for Neurological Research calculated BMI for 210 people with MS and 210 people without the diagnose. They found out that obese people at the age of 20 are twice as likely to later develop MS as people who are not obese. The researchers also paid attention to the fact that people with higher BMI also had higher levels of leptin, a hormone made by fat tissue that regulates several processes in the body, including immune response.

“Leptin promotes inflammatory responses in the body, which could potentially explain the link between obesity and MS,” said study author Jorge Correale, MD, of the Raúl Carrera Institute for Neurological Research in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

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