According to a study by the University of Oxford, a slight increase in the risk of falling ill emerges regardless of the type of hormonal contraceptive used and the method of administration, especially for women over 35. The results include all hormonal contraceptives, including those composed of progestogens only and those that combine estrogen and progestin together
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Hormonal contraceptives, including the minipill, the progestogen-only IUD, and contraceptives that combine estrogen and progestogen together, may slightly increase the risk of developing breast cancer, especially if taken after age 35. The correlation emerges from a new study carried out by researchers at the University of Oxford and published in PloS Medicine. The research speaks of an increase in risk of 20-30%, regardless of the type of hormonal contraceptive used and the method of administration, but the data must be compared with the average risk of the general female population, thus obtaining a slight increase in risk. The results obtained by the scholars are in line with what was already known about hormonal contraceptives thanks to past studies, but the importance of the study concerns the data on progestogen-only contraceptives, the use of which has grown in recent years.
I study
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Researchers from the Cancer Epidemiology Unit at the Nuffield Department of Population Health at the University of Oxford carried out an analysis of data from around 9,500 UK women who developed breast cancer between 1996 and 2017. The data is included in a database called Clinical Practice Research Datalink which also records contraceptive use. The participants considered were all under the age of 50. Their medical records were compared with those of 18,000 other women in the control group, similar in age and other characteristics that can influence the likelihood of getting sick.
The results
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The study found that 44% of those with breast cancer were using contraceptives or had recently stopped, compared with 39% of the control group. The researchers used this data to calculate the increased risk associated with contraceptives, after eliminating other confounders. With five years of using any type of contraceptive, the increase was quite small for girls aged 16-20, eight more cases per 100,000 women, while it was higher for 35-39 year olds with 250 cases. additional cancer per 100,000 women. The research “provides important new evidence that progestogen-only contraceptive use is associated with a slightly increased risk of breast cancer,” the researchers wrote in the study conclusions. A risk that would appear to be similar “in size to that associated with combined hormonal contraceptives”. According to the researchers, “because the risk of getting breast cancer increases with advancing age, the absolute risk associated with the use of both types of oral contraceptives is estimated to be lower in women who take them when they are younger and more fertile than those who use them in old age”.