Fertility Drug Posses Risk of Breast Cancer

The researchers from the National Institute of Health have revealed that Ovulation-Stimulating Fertility drugs temporarily elevates estrogen levels which trigger breast cancer.

The study that was published in the Journal of The National Cancer Institute was done in order to resolve the mystery with the increasing breast cancer problems. The risk of young onset breast cancer was done by conducting a sister matched case control study called the Two Sister Study.  Under this they considered women who were diagnosed with breast cancer under the age f 50 years and their breast cancer free control sisters. These were studied between September 2008-December 2010. They researchers focused specifically at fertility drug exposure according to whether or not it had resulted in a pregnancy lasting at least 10 weeks.

The research was that was done by Chunyuan Fei, Ph.D., at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), and colleagues claims that women who had used fertility drugs showed a non-statistically significantly reduced risk of breast cancer compared to women who did not use fertility drugs and women who used fertility drugs and did not conceive a 10-plus week pregnancy were at a statistically significantly lowered risk of breast cancer compared to nonusers. Women who had used fertility drugs and conceived a 10-plus week pregnancy did, however, have a statistically significantly increased risk of breast cancer compared to women who had been unsuccessfully treated.

The lead author says, "Our data suggest that exposure to a stimulated pregnancy is enough to undo the reduction in risk associated with a history of exposure to ovulation-stimulating drugs."

The researchers conclude that normal women who took drugs were less prone to being victims of breast cancer whereas pregnant women who took the drugs had high chances of suffering with breast cancer.