Certain Mibelas 24 Fe birth control pills has been voluntarily recalled by Lupin Pharmaceuticals due to a packaging error that puts placebo pills at the beginning of the pack rather than at the end. This is according to a Food and Drug Administration announcement.
The lot in question is L600518 with an expiration date of May 2018.
Women who have taken the pills in the order they appear in the recalled packs, are at risk of unintended pregnancy. For some, this could have very serious repercussions.
“For patients in whom a pregnancy is contraindicated or in whom concomitant medications may have teratogenic effects, an unintended pregnancy may cause significant adverse maternal or fetal health consequences, including death,” the FDA announcement said.
Dr. Lauren Streicher, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University and director of the Northwestern Medicine Center for Sexual Medicine and Menopause said the risk of unplanned pregnancy associated with these pills is very real.
“If you take these first four pills thinking that they are the real thing, you may be off the pill for eight days instead of four and that increases the likelihood of inadvertent pregnancy,” Streicher said, adding that it’s not like missing a single pill in the middle or end of a cycle, which does not increase the risk.
If you are already in the middle of your cycle with these pills, but have not had sex, then the risk isn’t elevated, though you will need to use a back-up means of pregnancy prevention, such as condoms, Streicher said.
For those who have already started a pack of the out-of-sequence pills who have had sex, Streicher’s advice is: “Pray. And continue to take the rest of the pack and use back-up contraception for the remainder of the cycle, such as condoms. If they don’t get their period when they finish the pack, do a pregnancy test.”
The FDA recommends that “Consumers with questions regarding this recall can contact Lupin by phone 1-800-399-2561, 8:00 am to 5:00 pm EST, Monday through Friday.”