Rising use of contraceptive pill linked to fall in ovarian cancer deaths

According to a study published in leading cancer journal Annals of Oncology, the number of deaths from ovarian cancer has fallen, around the globe, as a result of widespread use of contraceptive pills.

The fall is also assumed to be linked to a relative decline in the use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) pills used to treat symptoms of menopause, which recent research has found increases the risk of breast and ovarian cancer.

Data shows that between 2002 and 2012 the number of cases of ovarian cancer dropped by 22 per cent. Over 40 per cent of the 4,000 plus deaths per year in the UK are in women aged over 75.

Nonetheless, the study found considerable variation in the drop in deaths in European countries, with Hungary experiencing just a 0.6 per cent fall in deaths, compared to Denmark and Sweden were deaths fell by almost a quarter.

Professor Carlo La Vecchia of the University of Milan, and author of the study commented: “The large variations in death rates between European countries have reduced since the 1990s when there was a threefold variation across Europe from 3.6 per 100,000 in Portugal to 9.3 in Denmark.”

“This is likely to be due to more uniform use of oral contraceptives across the continent, as well as reproductive factors, such as how many children a woman has.

“However, there are still noticeable differences between countries such as Britain, Sweden and Denmark, where more women started to take oral contraceptives earlier – from the 1960s onwards – and countries in Eastern Europe, but also in some other Western and Southern European countries such as Spain, Italy and Greece, where oral contraceptive use started much later and was less widespread.

“This mixed pattern in Europe also helps to explain the difference in the size of the decrease in ovarian cancer deaths between the EU and the USA, as many American women also started to use oral contraceptives earlier. Japan, where deaths from ovarian cancer have traditionally been low, now has higher rates in the young than the USA or the EU – again, reflecting infrequent oral contraceptive use.”