{"id":175976,"date":"2017-12-07T10:22:13","date_gmt":"2017-12-07T15:22:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=175976"},"modified":"2017-12-07T12:57:57","modified_gmt":"2017-12-07T17:57:57","slug":"hormonal-birth-control-breast-cancer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/hormonal-birth-control-breast-cancer\/","title":{"rendered":"Study links hormonal birth control to increased breast cancer risk"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

The New England Journal of Medicine has published<\/a> a Danish study, funded by\u00a0the Novo Nordisk Foundation, which shows that the risk of breast cancer is greater for women who use hormonal birth control.<\/p>\n

The contraceptive use of 1.8 million women was studied, and it revealed that “[t]he risk of breast cancer was higher among women who currently or recently used contemporary hormonal contraceptives than among women who had never used hormonal contraceptives, and this risk increased with longer durations of use; however, absolute increases in risk were small.”<\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>, however, presents these “increases in risk” as not so small for everyone. Older women and women who use birth control for 10 years or more have a 38 percent greater risk of developing breast cancer, according to the study, compared to a 20 percent increased risk among hormonal contraceptive users overall. Researcher\u00a0Lina S. M\u00f8rch stated it is “very clear… very convincing” that the relationship between breast cancer and hormonal birth control “is causal.”<\/p>\n

\"pill\"<\/p>\n

The study “upends widely held assumptions about modern contraceptives for younger generations of women,” the Times states, adding:<\/p>\n

\n

The new paper estimated that for every 100,000 women, hormone contraceptive use causes an additional 13 breast cancer cases a year. That is, for every 100,000 women using hormonal birth control, there are 68 cases of breast cancer annually, compared with 55 cases a year among nonusers.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Times also notes that this link between breast cancer risk and contraception was established\u00a0“years ago,” but the Danish study “is the first to examine the risks associated with current formulations of birth control pills and devices in a large population.” Implants and IUDs which utilize hormones were found to be risky, as was progestin, which the Times says is “widely used in today\u2019s birth control methods” and “may be raising breast cancer risk.”<\/p>\n

An accompanying commentary to the study, from Oxford professor of epidemiology and medicine, David J. Hunter, says that “the new study did not find that any modern contraceptives were risk-free.” The Times quotes Hunter:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThere was a hope that the contemporary preparations would be associated with lower risk,\u201d he said in an interview. \u201cThis is the first study with substantial data to show that\u2019s not the case.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Danish researchers stated that they expected to find a lower risk of breast cancer today as compared to years ago, when more estrogen was used in birth control, but they didn’t. However, they found “no increased risk for breast cancer seen in women who used hormones for less than one year.”<\/p>\n

A breast cancer connection is not the only reason why women may want to avoid hormonal contraception. Birth control manufacturer labels confirm that part of the mechanism in hormonal contraception is preventing a newly-fertilized human zygote from implanting in the uterine wall. Implantation usually takes place around 8 days after the new human life has begun<\/a>, which means that a chemical which disrupts this process is considered an abortifacient — something which causes a new human life to be aborted.<\/p>\n