The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Tuesday approved the first birth-control pill designed to eliminate women’s monthly period.

The new pill, called Lybrel, uses a combination of low-dose synthetic hormones that are used in other oral contraceptives already on the market. But all of the 28 pills that come in a monthly pack will contain the active ingredients, forgoing the placebo tablets that normally cause menstruation to begin.

Contraceptive makers have been introducing a variety of products designed to minimise the frequency and duration of periods.

Yaz, made by Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals, and Loestrin 24 Fe, from Warner Chilcott Inc, came on the market last year with the promise of shortening periods to four days or less. Seasonale and Seasonique, sister products from Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc, limit periods to four times a year.

Lybrel, from Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, takes the trend to its logical conclusion by attempting to suppress periods altogether.

“Why have a period at all?” said Gerardo Bustillo, assistant chief of obstetrics and gynaecology at Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center in Fountain Valley, California.

But Lybrel doesn’t quite reach that goal, based on the results of two clinical trials involving 2,400 women between the ages of 18 and 49.

According to the FDA, the women experienced unscheduled bleeding or spotting, though the incidence of such events decreased over time. In one study, only 59 per cent of women who took Lybrel for one year reported no bleeding during the last month. Many women stopped taking the pill after problems with unscheduled bleeding.

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