The drugmaker Allergan issued a voluntary recall of nearly 170,000 Taytulla birth control sample packs after placebo pills and active capsules were placed in the wrong order, an error that could raise the risk of unintended pregnancy.
The sample packs were designed to have 24 active birth control pills, followed by four placebo pills. But the drugmaker discovered that the first four days of the pill pack had four nonhormonal placebo capsules instead of active capsules. The packaging error was discovered through a physician report.
"As a result of this packaging error, oral contraceptive capsules that are taken out of sequence may place the user at risk for contraceptive failure and unintended pregnancy," the voluntary recall notice reads. "The reversing of the order may not be apparent to either new users or previous users of the product, increasing the likelihood of taking the capsules out of order."
The affected product was sent to healthcare providers across the U.S. as samples. The affected Taytulla packs have been available nationwide since Aug. 27, 2017 and have an expiration date of May 2019.