Fertility drugs and cancer

Fertility drugs: the cancer link

Many women turn to fertility drugs to help them conceive but for many the joy of becoming pregnant has been set alongside fears that the drugs could put them at a higher risk of developing ovarian cancer years later.

These concerns were raised by several small studies carried out during the 1990s but new research provides some reassurance. The largest study ever to investigate the possible link between fertility drugs and cancer has found what the researchers describe as “no convincing association” between the two, after following a group of women across 16 years after they used fertility drugs.

Follow-up is ongoing and researchers stress that a longer period will be necessary to totally rule out a link, since the women were age around 47 at this follow-up and the peak age for ovarian cancer is 60 years and older. However they note that if there were a strong association they would expect to see it by now.

The study analyzed the medical records of 54,362 infertile women treated for infertility between 1963 and 1998, 156 of whom were diagnosed with ovarian cancer afterwards. After adjusting for risk factors associated with the cancer (which include age, family history, gene mutations and obesity), the researchers looked at how four different fertility drugs, including the commonly used clomiphene and gonadotropins, impacted on ovarian cancer risk. They found no overall increased risk for the cancer related to use of any of the fertility drugs, even among women who’d undergone 10 or more treatment cycles and women who never became pregnant (two groups that were thought to be most at risk).

Earlier findings from the same women included in this study found there was no link between fertility drugs and an increased risk for breast cancer, thyroid cancer and malignant melanoma.

The study appears in the journal BMJ Online First.

 

Was this article helpful?