No link found between fertility drugs and ovarian cancer

Whenever a new technology becomes available, there are concerns about other effects it may have. In this case, there were concerns that new fertility drugs, gaining in popularity, could play a role in a woman developing ovarian cancer. This has been hard to investigate because of the theory that women who have difficulty conceiving could be already at a higher risk of developing ovarian cancer – so it would be difficult to tell if it was the infertility or the treatment that caused it.

A new study, published yesterday in the BMJ found that there is no link between the two. Researchers studied almost 55 thousand women who visited infertility clinics in Denmark between the years 1963 to 1998. The women were followed for an average of 15 years to see if they developed cancer.

The researchers did find that there was a slight increase in cancer among women who took Clomid, but the researchers didn’t feel that this was a significant increase and that the rise may have been an oddity.

You can read more about the study in this article, Fertility Drugs and Ovarian Cancer Not Linked, Study Says. The study authors do caution that the study was only 15 years and that doesn’t mean that cancer may not develop later on in life.

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Tags: cancer blog, ovarian cancer, fertility drugs and cancer