Women who take fertility drugs are not at a higher risk for developing ovarian cancer. For more than a decade, controversy has surrounded the relationships among infertility, fertility drug use and the risk of ovarian cancer.
According to research on nearly 13,000 women, investigators at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, USA analysed interview data on infertility and fertility drug use from eight studies conducted between 1989 and 1999 in the United States, Denmark, Canada and Australia. The studies included 5,207 women with ovarian cancer, and 7,705 women without ovarian cancer. They compared women who had fertility problems and took fertility drugs with women who also had fertility problems but did not take fertility drugs.
They found that women who had used fertility drugs were not more likely to develop ovarian cancer than those who had never used fertility drugs. Women who receive fertility treatments develop ovarian cancer because of underlying conditions that cause infertility, not because of the treatments themselves.
Women, for a long time have been stuck with difficult decisions regarding fertility treatment. Where on the one hand they are desperate to have children and they want to do whatever they can to increase their chances and on the other hand they are worried that they are going to increase the risk for developing one of the most terrible cancers in women. This analysis helps put to rest questions regarding fertility drugs, which have become more popular for women who have children at later ages.
American Journal of Epidemiology January 2002, Vol. 155 (2)