Aerodynamic Assessment of Young Women’s Voices as a Function of Oral Contraceptive Use

Abstract

Objective: To examine possible differences in glottal airflow parameters according to oral contraceptive (OC) use. Subjects and Methods: The participants included 16 women, 20–24 years of age. Eight women were taking a triphasic OC; the remaining 8 women were not taking any form of oral contraception (NOC). All participants were recorded on days 7 and 14 of their menstrual cycle. Three repetitions of the sustained vowel /a/ were obtained using a circumferentially vented respiratory face mask connected to a wide-band pressure transducer. Measures of peak flow, minimum flow, alternating flow, fundamental frequency (F₀) and relative sound pressure level were obtained. Results: A multivariate analysis of variance with sound pressure level as a covariate revealed no significant effect of day of recording upon the dependent measures. As a group, the OC women exhibited significantly higher F₀, peak and alternating flow rates compared to the NOC women. Removal of data outliers from the OC women resulted in similar airflow rates for both groups. Conclusion: The findings from this preliminary study did not support the use of glottal airflow measures to distinguish OC women from NOC women. Differences in F₀ findings may reflect hormonally mediated changes in laryngeal tissue and warrant further investigation.

The Effect of Initiating Oral Contraceptive Use on Voice: A Case Study

“…Prior research has demonstrated no conclusive relationship between airflow rates, menstrual cycle phase, and OC use. 26 Thus, for this participant, the changes in hormonal levels with OC use did not appear to affect the stiffness of her vocal folds. It was assumed that the observed changes in speech acoustics would result in greater stability of these measures across the phases of the menstrual cycle.…”