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THURSDAY, Nov. 19, 2020<\/p>\n
Fertility<\/a> treatments such as in vitro fertilization<\/a> don’t appear to increase a woman’s risk of ovarian cancer<\/a>, a new study finds.<\/p>\n Previous studies suggested that women who used this assisted reproductive technologies (ART) such as IVF<\/a> to get pregnant<\/a> may be at risk for ovarian cancer<\/a> and non-malignant<\/a> borderline tumors, due to increased levels of sex hormones needed to stimulate egg production, as well as multiple punctures disrupting ovarian tissue.<\/p>\n ART involves removing eggs from a woman’s ovaries surgically, fertilizing them in a lab and then placing them in the womb.<\/p>\n In this study, researchers analyzed data from the Netherlands to compare more than 30,600 women who received ovarian stimulation for ART between 1983 and 2001 and nearly 10,000 infertile<\/a> women who didn’t receive such treatment.<\/p>\n After a median follow-up of 24 years, the women had 158 invasive cancers<\/a> and 100 borderline ovarian tumors. (Median means half were followed longer, half for less time.)<\/p>\n Significantly, women who had ART did not have a higher cancer<\/a> risk than infertile<\/a> women who did not have ART — even after more than 20 years had passed.<\/p>\n Compared with women in the general population, women who used ART did have a higher ovarian cancer<\/a> risk.<\/p>\n Researchers said this was mainly because a higher proportion of women who received ART never had children. Childlessness has been shown to be a strong risk factor for ovarian cancer<\/a>, according to authors of the study published Nov. 17 in JNCI: Journal of the National Cancer<\/a> Institute<\/em>.<\/p>\n They also found that the risk of ovarian cancer<\/a> decreased among women with a larger number of successful ART cycles that resulted in childbirth<\/a>.<\/p>\n Compared with women in the general population and infertile<\/a> women who didn’t have ART, women who had ART had almost double the odds for borderline ovarian tumors, according to the study.<\/p>\n But the risk didn’t rise after more treatment cycles or longer follow-up, suggesting that it might owe to underlying patient characteristics rather than ART itself, according to the researchers.<\/p>\n Borderline tumors are rare in the general population and generally easy to treat, they noted.<\/p>\n “Reassuringly, women who received ovarian stimulation for assisted reproductive technology do not have an increased risk of malignant<\/a> ovarian cancer<\/a>, not even in the long run,” said lead author Flora van Leeuwen, an epidemiologist at the Netherlands Cancer<\/a> Institute in Amsterdam.<\/p>\n “However, it is important to realize that even with the long follow-up in our study, the median age of the women at end of follow-up was only 56 years,” she said in a journal news release.<\/p>\n Noting that the incidence of ovarian cancer<\/a> in the population increases at older ages, van Leeuwen said it is important to follow women who have had ART even longer.<\/p>\n For more on ovarian cancer<\/a>, see the American Cancer Society<\/a>.<\/p>\n SOURCE: JNCI: Journal of the National Cancer<\/a> Institute<\/em>,<\/em> news release, Nov. 17, 2020<\/p>\n Robert Preidt<\/p>\n ![\"MedicalNews\"](\"https:\/\/images.medicinenet.com\/images\/HealthDay\/healthday.png\")
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