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. 2025 Oct;28(5):1211-1219.
doi: 10.1007/s00737-025-01592-z. Epub 2025 May 19.

Effect of combined oral contraceptive use on verbal memory function in healthy women

Mette C Hochheim  1 , Vibe G Frokjaer  1   2   3 , Søren V Larsen #  1   2 , Vibeke H Dam #  4
Affiliations

Effect of combined oral contraceptive use on verbal memory function in healthy women

Mette C Hochheim et al. Arch Womens Ment Health. 2025 Oct.

Abstract

Purpose: Female sex hormones as well as the synthetic hormones contained within combined oral contraceptives (COCs) may influence emotional and cognitive functioning including learning and memory; however, findings are inconsistent. We here present the largest study to date investigating the effect of COC use on verbal memory in healthy women.

Methods: COC use and verbal memory scores were available from the CIMBI database for 205 healthy women in the reproductive age. We assessed if verbal memory and affective bias differed between COC users and non-users. In a subgroup of natural cycling women in the follicular phase, we assessed if verbal memory was associated with plasma estradiol levels.

Results: We found no statistically significant group differences in either overall memory performance (p = 0.16) or affective memory bias (p = 0.18) between COC users and non-users, although there was a trend suggesting COC users may exhibit slightly better recall for short-term (p = 0.09) and long-term task (p = 0.08) conditions. Similarly, COC users tended to have slightly better overall memory compared with women in the follicular phase (p = 0.05). Follicular phase plasma estradiol levels were not associated with verbal memory.

Conclusions: We found no support for COC use to negatively impact verbal memory, if anything COC users tended to perform better than natural cycling women in follicular phase; however, this could be influenced by a healthy user bias. In conclusion, these findings highlight that women who tolerate COCs well should not be concerned about potential adverse effects on memory.

Keywords: Cognition; Combined oral contraceptives; Reproductive mental health; Sex steroid hormones; Verbal affective memory.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Competing interest: The last author has received honorarium as a speaker for Lundbeck Pharma A/S. The second author has received honoraria for consulting or as a speaker from SAGE Therapeutics, Lundbeck Pharma A/S, Janssen Cilag A/S, Gedeon-Richter A/S, and Ferring Pharmaceuticals.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Group difference in verbal memory performance between combined oral contraceptive (COC) users (n = 90) and non-users (n = 115)
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Group differences in verbal affective memory bias between combined oral contraceptive (COC) users (n = 90) and non-users (n = 115)
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Association between plasma estradiol levels and Total Word Recall-% in naturally cycling women in the follicular phase of the menstrual cycle
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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