Fertility drugs do not fuel ovarian cancer

Copenhagen, February 6: Drugs commonly used to correct infertility in women don’t raise their risk of ovarian cancerdefine, a Dutch study asserted.

Debunking the long held belief, a team of researchers from the Danish Cancerdefine Society has claimed to have found "no convincing association" between the drugs' use and increased risk of ovarian cancer. However, the volunteers will be tracked to see if their risk increased with age, researchers emphasized.

The study, the longest ever to address the issue, zeroed in on 54,362 infertile women, average age 32 years, who got treated for infertility between 1963 and 1998.

Four potent infertility drugs, Clomid by Sanofi-Aventis and Serophene by Merck, gonadotropins, human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) and gonadotropin-releasing hormone were evaluated for the alleged cancer links. All drugs helped stimulate ovulationdefine and conception.

During the follow-up span of 15 years, 156 cases of ovarian cancer were reported. However, researchers found no direct link between increased cancer risk and use of any of the fertility drugs.

Moreover, the risk didn’t rise even among women who sought treatment for 10 or more cycles and women who never conceived – two groups highly vulnerable to ovarian cancer.

Also, there was no significant difference in risk for women who used a combination of fertility drugs.

"Some women who take fertility drugs will inevitably develop ovarian cancer by chance alone, but current evidence suggests that women who use these drugs do not have an increased risk of developing ovarian cancer," lead researcher of the study, Allan Jensen from the Danish Cancer Society, notes.

But researchers still want to interpret the results with caution. "The research offers reassuring evidence for the absence of a strong association between use of fertility drugs and risk of ovarian cancer," Jensen stated. Still, "many of the women in the study haven’t yet reached the usual peak age for developing ovarian cancer."

The average age of the women at the end of the study was 47 years, but the mean age for diagnosis of ovarian cancer in women is 63 years. The volunteers will now be followed to see if their cancer risk increased with age.

The results of the study were published online Thursday in the British Medical Journal.