Oral Contraceptives and Gynecologic Cancers
Birth Control Pill May Protect Against Ovarian Cancer
Oct 29, 2008
Oral contraceptives, a combination of synthetic oestrogen and progestin hormones, are well known for effective birth control since the 60s. As it turns out oral contraceptives may have another role to play in women’s health: for several years they were suspected to have a protective effect against some forms of cancer, such as ovarian or endometrial cancer, at the expense of an increasing the risk of others, such as breast and cervix cancer.
Since most studies demonstrating these controversial roles in different cancers were generally weak or biased due to a relatively small number of patients studied, the results have not convinced scientists and physicians on the true effects of oral contraceptives in cancer prevention or progression.
In a recent study, "Ovarian cancer and oral contraceptives: collaborative reanalysis of data from 45 epidemiological studies including 23,257 women with ovarian cancer and 87,303 controls" published in January 2008, in the well-known medical journal The Lancet (2008, Vol. 371, No. 9609, pp 303-313), the collaborative Group on Epidemiological Studies of Ovarian Cancer from Cancer Research UK (Oxford, UK) meticulously re-analyzed a pooled data set from 45 different epidemiological studies done in over 20 countries, mostly in the USA and Europe, and has confirmed the beneficial role of these contraceptives in ovarian cancer.
Oral Contraceptives Reduce Ovarian Cancer Risk
This new study, includes some 23,000 patients with ovarian cancer and more than 80,000 healthy women, encompassing several important factors such as the age, ethnicity, parity, weight as well as other medical factors such as the duration of use of oral contraceptive, the time of treatment cessation since cancer diagnosis and the age of oral contraceptive use. They demonstrate that oral contraceptives do reduce the risk of ovarian cancer and this reduction in risk is greater the longer the contraceptive is used.
The Reduction in Risk Is Greater the Longer the Pill Is Used
In addition, the researchers found that these beneficial effects are long lasting, more than 30 years after use the risk is still attenuated. They calculate that the use of oral contraceptives could prevent the death of some 30,000 ovarian cancer patients per year worldwide.
Balancing Decision
While this ``unequivocal good news``, as considered by Eduardo Franco and Eliane Franco, two researchers at McGill University in Montreal, may be reassuring for women using oral contraceptives, it raises other questions, for example what about the increased risk of breast cancer by hormones contained in oral contraceptive pills.
Breast cancer accounts for more than 22,000 new cases per year in Canada versus 2,300 new cases of ovarian cancer per year. Women have to make a balancing decision in considering risks versus the benefits of oral contraceptives as a preventive treatment or birth control.
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