CeMCOR involved in Letter to Editor that negates all athletic teenaged women should take the Pill

A recent Physician and Sportsmedicine article (DeFroda et al. Phys Sportsmed 2019) reported, in a large database of those in the USA having anterior cruciate ligament surgery for knee injuries, that fewer of the teen-aged women having surgical repair were using The Pill (or combined hormonal contraception). It is well known that younger women athletes have more anterior cruciate injuries than young men but the reasons are unclear and specific sports training can prevent the majority of those injuries. The authors, however, jumped to the conclusion that all athletic teenaged women should therefore take The Pill.

With the University of British Columbia tendon expert, physiotherapist Dr. Alexander Scott, with whom CeMCOR has been studying tendons and women’s estradiol and progesterone levels, and a young women’s sport rehabilitation specialist from the University of Alberta, we have written a letter to the editor criticizing the poor science. The letter to the editor can be read here. In addition we called attention to CeMCOR’s recent newsworthy documentation that adolescent women taking The Pill were losing significant spinal bone compared to similar aged control women with natural cycles (Goshtasebi et al. Clinical Endocrinology 2019).