by
Stepy —
August 11, 2014
- Healthy living is a life style.
- It is also about being informed on the latest medical research.
- Women who recently used birth control pills containing estrogen and a few other formulations had an increased risk of breast cancer, while women who took formulations without estrogen did not. The study was published in the journal Cancer Research.
- “Our results suggest that use of contemporary oral contraceptives [birth control pills] in the past year is associated with an increased breast cancer risk relative to never or former oral contraceptive use, and that this risk may vary by oral contraceptive formulation,” said Elisabeth F. Beaber, PhD, MPH, a staff scientist in the Public Health Sciences Division of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington.
- “Our results require confirmation and should be interpreted cautiously,” Beaber added.
- “Breast cancer is rare among young women and there are numerous established health benefits associated with oral contraceptive use that must be considered. In addition, prior studies suggest that the increased risk associated with recent oral contraceptive use declines after stopping oral contraceptives.”
- In a controlled study of 1,102 women diagnosed with breast cancer and 21,592 controls, Beaber and her team found that recent birth control pill use increased breast cancer risk by 50 percent, compared to those who never used or formerly used. All the study participants were treated at Group Health Cooperative in the Seattle-Puget Sound area. They all received a diagnosis of cancer 1990 and 2009.
- Birth control pills with high estrogen content increased the risk of breast cancer 2.7 times, and those with a medium amount of estrogen had 1.6 times increased risk. Pills that contained ethynodiol diacetate increased the risk 2.6 times and triphasic combination pills containing an average of 0.75 milligrams of norethindrone increased the risk 3.1 times.
- Birth control pills with low estrogen did not increase the risk of breast cancer.
- Unlike most studies on this matter, Beaber and her team used electronic pharmacy records instead of self-report to find statistics on drug names, dosages, and duration of medication.
- Healthy living is about educating yourself and taking healthy steps, so make sure your make the right decision when it comes to birth control pills with the ingredients mentioned.
