Ovarian cancer on birth control
Conținutul
Birth control pills have been used by more than million women worldwide. For long-term users, the benefits of the pill are still seen in diminished ovarian and endometrial cancers; but women who took the pill for more than eight ovarian cancer on birth control were twice as likely to get cervical cancer.
The study, published in the British Medical Journal, comes 50 years after the pill garnered FDA approval to help regulate the periods of women with menstrual disorders. Since then, it has also helped more than million women worldwide avoid pregnancy by blocking ovulation.
Because of controversy surrounding its use, researchers kept meticulous data about the women who first took it and the conditions they developed.
But long-term pill takers were 20 percent more likely to develop cancer. However, increased cancer among long-term users was primarily cervical cancer, which was not aggressively screened for until He recommends that women using the pill for a long time recognize they have an increased risk and remember to go in for their annual screenings.
Miriam Cremmer, a family planning specialist at New York University Medical Center, agrees that long-term pill users should not be too concerned. Cremmer noted that she and her colleagues were not concerned because the risk increase was relatively small and only found for easily identified cancer types.
