Translated material
Research: Hormonal contraceptives increase the risk of breast cancer
A group of scientists from the University of Copenhagen conducted a large -scale study of hormonal contraceptives. It turned out that the prolonged use of these drugs significantly increases the risk of breast cancer. The study is published in The New England Journal of Medicine. Read more about the work by Sciencealert.
In Denmark, researchers studied the data of almost two million women aged 15 to 49 years. Records about their health were held in the national health base for about ten years. During the study, doctors identified in the test group about 11.5 thousand cases of breast cancer. All women during the experiments took hormonal contraceptives for a long time.
Scientists calculated the relative risk of developing breast cancer. To do this, they compared the data of women taking hormonal drugs and those who did not use these drugs.
It turned out that the group in which contraceptives took at least 12 months, the risk of breast cancer has increased by about 10%. If women have used these drugs for at least ten years, then the indicator was already 40%.
The authors of the study studied statistics on various types of hormonal contraception-oral estrogen-gestagenic drugs, intrauterine hormonal systems, implants and rings. Scientists took into account heredity and age, but did not include data on hormonal treatment of infertility and other diseases in the reports.
According to scientists, the result of their work is seriously different from the data of previous studies. Despite the scale of the work done, new studies are needed that could confirm the conclusion that hormonal contraception entails an increased risk of breast cancer. In addition, the work of scientists from the University of Copenhagen did not consider women aged 50 to 70 years. It is during this period that the breast tumor develops most often.