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Using Amoxicillin. Does It Reduce The Effectiveness Of Birth Control?
I ve been using amoxicillin for the past 8 days ( 500 mg 3 times a day and only twice on saturday) I ve been on birth control (combination) for almost 4 years now and I ve never had any issues with it. It was day 8 and I took 2 antibiotic pills and my bc pill at regular time a few hours later. My bf and I didn t have sex the entire time I was on the antibiotic and we had sex on saturday and we used a condom at first and it slipped off and we went on for 5 min and he didn t finish in me since he pulled out. Immediately afterward I panicked cuz I remembered hearing some antibiotics could decrease the affectiveness. Then, I started looking it up and I saw different answers like it s a myth most antibiotics affect the BC except some but mine wasn t listed. I took the precaution to getting the plan B pill 10 am the next morn since all pharmacies were closed after we did it. I took it and I wanted to get bigger condoms for my bf so we could have sex again and we ended up getting Trojan Magmuns (we never used it before but got it since it s what could fit him in the store) we usually used lifestyles or condoms I got from the clinic and we never had an issue where it broke). Then we had sex yesterday and what do you know? The condom broke as soon as he finished :/ so I cleaned myself up ASAP. My question is if I continue to take my BC pills as normal along with the plan B I already took, should I be ok? Now, my bf won t have sex with me cuz the condom broke and I want him to trust me that everything s going to be ok and that we need to use condoms that we used before since we never had any problems with them.
Fri, 8 Mar 2013
Hello, thanks for using health care magic.
With the effective use of birth control pills, the chances of getting an unwanted pregnancy is very minimal especially after a long duration of use. More so, the use of emergency contraceptive pills which has a failure rate of less than 0.5%, its less likely that you could become pregnant.
For sure, several drugs interact with birth control pills and decrease their efficacy but for sure amoxicillin is not amongst them. Old data suggested that ampicilline which belongs to same class as amoxicilline was capable of decreasing the effectiveness of oral contraceptive pills; however, newer studies have contradicted this idea.
So, with effective use of your daily pills and emmergency pill, it is less likely that you become pregnant. If you are however still woried, you could do a home pregnancy testing in a month's time to be sure.
Best regards and hope this helps you.
Dr Achuo
With the effective use of birth control pills, the chances of getting an unwanted pregnancy is very minimal especially after a long duration of use. More so, the use of emergency contraceptive pills which has a failure rate of less than 0.5%, its less likely that you could become pregnant.
For sure, several drugs interact with birth control pills and decrease their efficacy but for sure amoxicillin is not amongst them. Old data suggested that ampicilline which belongs to same class as amoxicilline was capable of decreasing the effectiveness of oral contraceptive pills; however, newer studies have contradicted this idea.
So, with effective use of your daily pills and emmergency pill, it is less likely that you become pregnant. If you are however still woried, you could do a home pregnancy testing in a month's time to be sure.
Best regards and hope this helps you.
Dr Achuo
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