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A Modern smartphone app has been approved for masses to use as atype of contraceptionin the European Union , but experts monish that you should n’t toss out the condoms andbirth control pillsjust yet .
The app , Natural Cycles , is available in the Apple App Store and the Google playing period store to drug user everywhere . It digitalize an age - old method acting of preventing gestation , sometimes anticipate the rhythm method acting , innate family planningor fecundity awareness . The mind is to cross ovulation and void sex ( or expend extra protection ) on days when a womanhood is most likely to be fertile . But these methods have a loser rate of about 25 percent , even though the promotional materials for Natural Cycles lay claim that the app is 93 percent in effect . [ Wonder Woman : 10 Interesting fact About the Female trunk ]
" Do n’t swear on something like this , " said Dr. Mary Jane Minkin , a prof of midwifery , gynaecology and reproductive sciences at the Yale School of Medicine who is not involved with the company that make the app . The app could be an choice if a couple wanted topostpone pregnancy for a whilebut would not mind it if they did become pregnant , she aver . But most people who are looking for contraception are going to want something more reliable .
An app for family planning
The party that makes Natural Cycles is headquartered in Sweden , and the app was certified as a medical machine in February , arrive at it the only app that can call itself " contraceptive method " in Europe . The app requires users to put down a precise trunk - temperature measurement first thing every cockcrow — a conversant task for people who are already using instinctive house planning method acting , as resting eubstance temperature rises by a miniscule amount rightat ovulation . The app then tracks body temperature and the menstrual Hz , postulate into business relationship the amount of time that sperm cell are likely to subsist in the body , to give " flushed " day on which thechance of fertilizationis high and " light-green " mean solar day on which it is lower .
It ’s basically just the tech - age way of doing rude family preparation , " which has been around for generation , " said Dr. Nathaniel DeNicola , an assistant professor of tocology and gynaecology at The George Washington University ’s School of Medicine & Health Sciences . DeNicola is not involved with the company that makes the app .
Insufficient data
But the success rate that Natural Cycles touts seems unrealistically high-pitched , and it comes from just two clinical survey , DeNicola say . Research on other methods of contraception — admit condoms , birthing ascendance pills and intrauterine devices ( IUDs ) — give-up the ghost back decade , so the success charge per unit are pretty percipient . That ’s not true of this app , DeNicola said .
In one bailiwick , aclinical study publish in March 2016 , the app ’s makers detect that it had a failure pace of just 0.5 percent — it accidentally gave users a green " go onwards " sign that unprotected sex would be OK on daytime when it should have given a red " no - go " preindication only 0.5 percent of the time . In other words , out of 1,000 women using the app , 5 could gestate to become significant due to the app ’s algorithm nonstarter .
This failure rate is on a par with that of one of the most reliablereversible birth controlmethods out there , the IUD , DeNicola said . However , that pace is the app ’s " thoroughgoing use rate , " meaning it applies only to people who use the app absolutely , following the directions to the varsity letter every day , DeNicola said .
The perfect - employment charge per unit is " believably the last figure that should be out there , because the data point really is n’t penny-pinching to suffer that " for typical users , DeNicola articulate . [ 7 Surprising fact About the Pill ]
Another estimate of the app ’s failure rate is called the " typical use " pace , and peg down the risk of anunintended pregnancyat 7 percent . But that routine is based on a individual subject field in which a third of the hoi polloi enrolled dropped out before the end . The company - affiliated researchers did a more bourgeois calculation by assuming all of those dropouts nonplus pregnant , and amount to a nonstarter charge per unit of 10 percent .
" That would probably be the most medically wakeless number to be talk about , if you felt comfy give a figure at all base on just one study , " DeNicola said .
Risk assessment
Whether Natural Cycles would be a good option depends on the user ’s pauperization and expected value for their birthing control , Minkin said . If the 25 per centum chance of pregnancy that unremarkably comes with the natural family planning method acting seems satisfactory , then the app is " certainly good than nothing , " she said .
But anyone hoping for a more reliable method should not go in thinking that Natural Cycles , or any fertility awareness app , will give them a 99.5 percent chance of not getting pregnant , DeNicola order . For rate like that , the great unwashed would be better off usinglong - acting two-sided birth control equipment , or LARCs . These let in pick such as the birth control implant that go under the tegument ( 99 pct good , agree to Planned Parenthood ) andIUDs(99 percent effective ) .
At present , health and medicine appsare largely unregulated in the United States , said DeNicola , who is the frailty chair of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists ' chore force on telehealth . That means that the safe and efficacy of health apps are often " purchaser beware . "
" We should be using this new technology , " DeNicola say , " but using it carefully . "
Original article onLive scientific discipline .
