Hematological Profile Changes Among Oral Contraceptive Users: A Narrative Review

Hematological profiles are measurable indices of blood that can be used to identify and monitor some pathological and physiological abnormalities. Oral contraceptives are one of the factors which may exert an influence on hematological laboratory test results and have a critical importance. Therefore, the main goal of this review was to evaluate the hematologic profile alterations brought on by the use of oral contraceptives. Accordingly, even though there were studies that showed no significant difference, most of the oral contraceptive users had higher hemoglobin, platelet, and erythrocyte counts than non-users. Other erythrocyte metrics, such as mean corpuscular volume, mean corpuscular hemoglobin, mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration and red cell dispersion width, did not significantly change. Moreover, leukocyte count and leukocyte differential count had no significant change among the oral contraceptive users in comparison to non-users. Oral contraceptive users typically have shorter prothrombin times, activated partial thromboplastin times, thrombin times, and greater levels of fibrinogen and D-dimer compared to non-users. However, this review is a narrative review and did not show the pooled effect of oral contraceptives on these hematological parameters. Therefore, it is recommended to do systematic and meta-analysis to determine the pooled effect of oral contraceptives.