A new study provides women with more information about whether the type of birth control they use affects their risk of breast cancer more than others.
The study, published in the journal PLOS Medicine on Monday, discovered that new forms of progestin-only hormonal birth control, such as pills, patches, implants, and injections, have the same, minor increased risk of breast cancer as birth control that contains both estrogen and progestin.
Hormonal Birth Control Linked To Breast Cancer
Progestagens, also known as progestins, are synthetic hormone drugs that mimic the natural hormone progesterone, which is essential for menstruation and conception.
Progestagen-only contraceptives, unlike combined hormone contraceptives, do not contain estrogen. Progestagen-only contraceptives work to prevent pregnancy by thickening mucus in the cervix, preventing sperm from reaching an egg, and, in some situations, totally stopping ovulation.
According to the study, progestagen-only contraception is related to a 20% to 30% relative risk of breast cancer, which is consistent with prior research on combined hormone contraception.
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Benefits Vs. Risks
The new study looked at data from nearly 10,000 women under the age of 50 in the United Kingdom who were diagnosed with invasive breast cancer between 1996 and 2017, as well as more than 18,000 who were not.
The Clinical Practice Research Datalink, which collected the study’s data, also merged the findings with earlier research, which included women of a broader age range.
In high-income nations, the 15-year “excess risk” associated with five years of combination or progestagen-only contraception usage was predicted to be 8 per 100,000 users aged 16 to 20 and 265 per 100,000 users aged 35 to 39.
The study had some limitations, according to the researchers, including a lack of complete information on a woman’s medication history. While this constraint hampered the capacity to analyze the long-term connections of contraceptive use with breast cancer risks, the authors believe it had little effect on the short-term findings.
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