Anxiety and inhibitory control in women cycling naturally and women taking oral contraceptives

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Elevated levels of anxiety are related to longer response times on tasks assessing inhibition, the ability to restrain automatic responses. The literature shows inconsistent results regarding the link between oral contraceptives (OC), anxiety, and inhibition. The present project aimed to compare anxiety levels and inhibitory control towards emotional words, including those eliciting anxiety, in naturally cycling (NC) women and women taking OC containing androgenic progestins or OC containing anti-androgenic progestins. We present two studies: a cross-sectional study with 240 women and a daily diary study with 89 women. There was no difference in anxiety levels between OC users and NC women in both studies. The daily diary study showed a significant difference between groups with anti-androgenic OC users always having the longest response times. Future studies could focus on the link between the different components of OC and inhibitory control as it can be linked to anxiety symptoms in women.