Contraceptive pills increase risk of cervical cancer

14 November, 2007

Women who take contraceptive pills are at increased risk of getting cervical cancer. However, the good news is that the rate of this risk drops once a woman stops using the pills.

A study by an international team of researchers conducted for Cancer Research UK examined 52,000 women, who had taken part in 24 studies around the world, found that the risk of cervical cancer increased with the length of time oral contraceptives were used.

The study has been published in the British medical journal The Lancet.

But, after discontinuing use of the Pill for a period of 10 years, a woman’s risk was the same as if she had never taken it.

Earlier studies have shown that the Pill is responsible for a higher risk of breast cancer and a lower risk of ovarian cancer and womb cancer.

It was seen that, for those who had taken the Pill for at least five years, the risk of cervical cancer went up to twice that of women who had never taken it.

This is not the first time research has shown a connection between the Pill and cervical cancer, but it had been unclear till now as to how long any risk lasted.

The study revealed that, in developed countries liked the United Kingdom, the chance of women who have never used the Pill developing cervical cancer is 3.8 in 1,000 – the figure going up to 4 per 1,000 in those who have taken it for five years, and to 4.5 per 1,000 in those who have taken the Pill for 10 years.

Dr Jane Green, leader of the study and a researcher based at Cancer Research UK’s epidemiology unit at the University of Oxford, said, “The Pill remains one of the most effective forms of contraception, and in the long term the small increases in risk for cervical and breast cancers are outweighed by reduced risks for ovarian and womb cancer.”

In the opinion of Professor Peter Sasieni, an expert in cancer epidemiology at the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine in London, women should be reassured by the results. He added, “For the individual women regularly going for screening, the lifetime risk is more like two in 10,000. One in three women will get cancer in their lifetime anyway, so the risk is fairly small. The important thing in this study is it shows what happens when you stop the Pill.”