Study confirms link between cervical cancer, birth control pill

The study confirms previous research linking the pill with an increased risk of cervical cancer and reveals for the first time that the risk falls after pill use stops, said Dr. Jane Green of the University of Oxford, who led the study reported in the medical journal Lancet.

Previous studies have revealed a small increased risk of breast cancer associated with use of the pill.

But the increased risk for both forms of cancer is small, Green added, and is “outweighed by reduced risks for ovarian and womb cancer.”

The results should “reassure women that fear of cervical cancer should not be a reason to avoid use of oral contraception,” Dr. Peter Sasieni of the Queen Mary University of London wrote in an editorial accompanying the report.

Researchers were interested in the potential persistence of the increased risk because the incidence of cervical cancer in women peaks in their 30s, several years after most women have stopped using the pill.

Green and her colleagues from the International Collaboration of Epidemiological Studies of Cervical Cancer combined results from 24 studies that included more than 52,000 women in 26 countries.

In industrialized countries, they concluded that the overall risk of cervical cancer among women who never have taken the pill is 3.8 cases per 1,000 women. The rate rises to 4.0 per 1,000 in women who took the pill for five years and 4.5 for those who have taken it for 10 years.

For women who are well-screened, Sasieni said, that translates into an additional two cases per 10,000 women. In less-developed countries where screening is not as prevalent, however, that translates to an increased risk of about 40 cases per 10,000, he said.

The hormones contained in the pill are only a secondary cause of cervical cancer, both Green and Sasieni emphasized. The primary cause of the disease is the human papilloma virus (HPV). Researchers are not sure how the hormones increase risk, but they might work by increasing the susceptibility of cervical cancer cells to infection or by accelerating the progression of cancer once an infection occurs.

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