Birth Pill ‘can cut ovarian cancer’

The UK study found that women who took the Pill for any length of time had around a 15 per cent lower risk of ovarian cancer compared to women who had never taken it.

But the benefits increased with the amount of time women used the contraceptive, with those taking it for ten years seeing their risk of the disease dropping by 45 per cent.

The finding will reassure many women who worry about long-term use of the Pill, although using the contraceptive is still linked to an increased risk of suffering breast cancer.

The new research, published in the British Journal of Cancer, came as new figures showed that 387 women in Scotland died with ovarian cancer last year, compared to 409 in 2000 and 425 in 1990.

The researchers from Oxford University, taking part in the long-running European Prospective Investigation of Cancer study, found that taking the Pill for more than ten years had the biggest impact on reducing the risk of ovarian cancer, followed by getting pregnant and having more than one child.

Among women who used the Pill for a year or less, the risk of developing ovarian cancer was about 28 per 100,000 cases per year. For women who took the Pill for at least ten years, this risk fell by about half to about 15 per 100,000 per year.

Women who had been through a full-term pregnancy had a 29 per cent lower ovarian cancer risk compared with women who had never been pregnant. The researchers also found that the bigger the family, the greater the benefit for women.

Epidemiologist Naomi Allen, from Oxford University, said: “Ovarian cancer is difficult to detect and so prevention is key to saving women suffering from this disease. These results are important, because most women don’t know that taking the Pill or getting pregnant can help reduce their risk of ovarian cancer later on in life.”

The research has not yet established how factors such as the Pill and pregnancy reduce ovarian cancer risk, but one theory is that these may lead to changes in hormone levels that can affect a woman’s risk of the disease.

While the Pill has a protective effect against ovarian cancer, women taking the Pill have an increased risk of breast cancer while using it, but which disappears after use has stopped.

Dr Richard Edmondson, a Cancer Research UK women’s cancer expert, said: “Women may be reassured to know that the oral contraceptive is not only an effective contraceptive but can have the added benefit of reducing their risk of ovarian cancer.

“This is, however, balanced against a slightly increased risk of developing breast cancer. To put this in context, it is estimated that if 100,000 women use the Pill for ten years or more there will be 50 more breast cancers than would have otherwise occurred, but 12 fewer ovarian cancers.”