Supposedly, antibiotics interfere with the absorption of the hormones in the pill or otherwise render them less effective. This would mean that taking the antibiotics would theoretically cancel out your pill, so you'd have taken your hormone-free week early, so it'd be your "period." This is why it says on a lot of pill documentation that you need to use a back-up method of bc while taking antibiotics. This is what people have said for the last 20-30 years.
There's new (like last 5-10 years) evidence that antibiotics don't actually interfere with bc, but it's definitely true for some individuals that taking antibiotics makes it as if they hadn't taken the pill at all during that time. Clearly the issue merits more investigation, but at the moment, it's hard to say what's going on with so little evidence. So, maybe that's what's up. . .
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Date: 2008-09-22 12:34 am (UTC)There's new (like last 5-10 years) evidence that antibiotics don't actually interfere with bc, but it's definitely true for some individuals that taking antibiotics makes it as if they hadn't taken the pill at all during that time. Clearly the issue merits more investigation, but at the moment, it's hard to say what's going on with so little evidence. So, maybe that's what's up. . .