Birth Control Pills May Raise Cervical Risk, Stop Other Cancers
Women who take birth control pills are more likely to develop cancer of the womb, though the benefits of contraceptive use in preventing other cancers may outweigh the risks, researchers report.
Taking birth control for at least five years led to a doubling of the risk of cancer of the cervix, the lower, neck- like part of the womb, compared with those who never used the pills, researchers reported in the U.K. medical journal The Lancet today. Other studies have found the drugs, made by companies including Germany’s Bayer AG, lower the risk of tumors in the ovaries and the endometrial lining of the womb.
Scientists confirmed a link between contraceptives and cervical cancer by analyzing data from 24 studies involving more than 50,000 women. They found that after women stopped the pills, the risk dropped to the same level as those who had never taken the pills. Women shouldn’t be discouraged from using the hormone-based drugs because cervical cancer appears later in life, when women usually are no longer using contraceptives.
“This is essentially a piece of good pill news,'’ Jane Green of Oxford University, who led an international group of researchers, said in an interview. “The extra risk of cervical cancer is more than outweighed by a reduction in risk'’ of cancers that affect the ovaries and womb lining, or endometrium, Green said.
About 3,670 women will die from cervical cancer in the U.S. this year, according to the Atlanta-based American Cancer Society. More than 22,000 will die from ovarian and endometrial cancer.
`Reassure Women’
The results should “reassure women that fear of cervical cancer should not be a reason to avoid use of oral contraception,'’ Peter Sasieni of Queen Mary University in London said in a comment accompanying the research.
The women in the study took birth control pills that contain a mix of hormones, called combination pills, which include New Brunswick, New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson’s Ortho Tri-Cyclen and Leverkusen, Germany-based Bayer’s best- selling Yasmin family of pills, which generated 768 million euros ($1.13 billion) in the first nine months of this year.
Merck & Co.’s Gardasil and GlaxoSmithKline Plc’s Cervarix, two vaccines recently on the market, prevent cervical cancer by protecting against a sexually transmitted virus, called human papillomavirus, that causes the disease.
To contact the reporter on this story: Eva von Schaper in Munich at evonschaper@bloomberg.net
