Hormonal Contraceptives Increase Breast Cancer Risk

According to a study released on Tuesday, all hormonal contraceptives, including the increasingly popular progestogen-only pills, have a marginally elevated risk of breast cancer.

The study’s authors emphasized that it is important to compare the advantages of hormonal contraceptives, especially the protection they offer against other types of female cancer, against the increased risk of breast cancer.

A higher risk of breast cancer has been linked to two-hormone, or combination, contraceptives, which use both estrogen and progestogen.

Although research on the associations between progestogen-only contraceptives and breast cancer has been sparse, their use has increased significantly over the past ten years.

According to the study, which was written up in the medical journal PLOS Medicine, the risk of breast cancer in women taking hormonal contraceptives that contained both progestogen and estrogen was roughly equivalent to that of women using progestogen-only.

The study found that women who take hormonal contraceptives have a 20–30% increased risk of breast cancer compared to women who do not.

The results echo those that were previously reported, notably in a sizable study from 1996.

Regardless of the mode of delivery—oral pill, IUD, implant, or injection—or whether it is a combination pill or a progestogen alone, the risk is essentially the same.

The authors of the study calculated the absolute excess risk associated with hormonal contraceptives, taking into account that the risk of breast cancer rises with age.

According to them, eight instances of breast cancer per 100,000 women who used hormonal contraception for five years between the ages of 16 and 20 constituted eight cases.

It was 265 instances per 100,000 people aged 35 to 39.

“Nobody wants to hear that something that they’re taking is going to increase their risk of breast cancer by 25 percent,” said Gillian Reeves, a professor of statistical epidemiology at the University of Oxford and a co-author of the study.

“What we’re talking about here is very small increase in absolute risk,” Reeves said.

“These increases in risk for breast cancer have to, of course, be viewed in the context of what we know about the many benefits of taking hormonal contraceptives,” she added.

“Not just in terms of birth control, but also because we know that oral contraceptives actually provide quite substantial and long term protection from other female cancers, such as ovarian cancer and endometrial cancer.”

The study also confirmed, as have other studies, that a woman’s chance of developing breast cancer decreases in the years after her cessation of chemical contraception.

The results, according to Stephen Duffy, a professor at Queen Mary University of London who was not involved in the study, were “reassuring in that the effect is modest.”

In the United Kingdom, where the use of progestogen-only contraceptives is now as common as the combined technique, the study included data from over 10,000 women under the age of 50 who got breast cancer between 1996 and 2017.

Reeves cited a number of reasons for the rising popularity of progestogen-only contraception.

They are advised for breastfeeding mothers, women who may be at risk for cardiovascular issues, and smokers over the age of 35.

“It might just be because women are taking hormonal contraceptives possibly into later years now,” Reeves said.

“So they are naturally at higher risk of those other conditions for which risk is increased with combined contraceptives.”

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