Contraceptive Pill Greatly Reduces Risk Of Ovarian Cancer

Contraceptive pill greatly reduces risk of ovarian cancer

26 Jan 2008

LONDON (AFP) — Taking the contraceptive pill greatly reduces women's risk of ovarian cancer and continues to protect them for at least 30 years after they stop taking it, research has shown.

The Oxford University team behind the study's findings, to be published in Saturday's edition of the medical journal The Lancet, suggest that the risk of ovarian cancer is cut by 20 percent for every five years that a woman has been on the pill.

Those who take it for 15 years cut their risk by half according to the findings, based on analysis of 45 previous studies.

The hormone drugs, which have been used for almost 50 years, have prevented about 200,000 cases of ovarian cancer worldwide, and 100,000 deaths from the disease, said the study's lead author Professor Valerie Beral.

Over the next decade, around 30,000 extra cases of ovarian cancer are likely to be prevented each year because of the pill, the study adds.

Calls for the pill to be available without prescription were strengthened by the study, an editorial in The Lancet said.

"Women deserve the choice to obtain oral contraceptives over the counter, removing a huge and unnecessary barrier to a potentially powerful cancer-preventing agent," it says.

The link between oral contraceptives and lower rates of ovarian cancer is long-established, but the study is one of the most detailed attempts to work out how effective it is across a woman's lifetime.

Source: AFP