IVF doesn’t cause cancer
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- Published on Monday, 25 February 2013 13:18
American researchers have conducted a large-scale study that shows that IVF doesn’t increase the risk of breast and gynecological cancers.
Previously, some researchers suspected that drugs that stimulate ovulation, as well as the procedure of ovaries puncture can encourage the development of ovarian cancer process, referring to the fact that women who came through IVF, allegedly, had an increased risk of cancer. However, the author of the American study, Louise Brinton, head of Hormonal and Reproductive Epidemiology Branch of National Cancer Institute in
Louise and her colleagues have examined the data of 67,608 patients who resorted to IVF between 1994 and 2011, and the medical records of 19,795 women who asked for medical help, but had never undergone IVF.
The researchers compared the results with the data from the National Cancer Registry and found out that by mid 2011, cancer was diagnosed in 1509 cases. This number consists of women from the both groups, that proves that there is no dependence on the presence or absence of IVF. It appeared, however, that the risk of ovarian cancer was higher for women who could not get pregnant, and who had to repeatedly resort to in vitro fertilization. A similar trend was also observed by the scientists from the
Basing on these data, scientists have concluded that the increased risk of ovarian cancer can be associated with their inherently disadvantaged state, but not with the IVF procedure.
The Fertility & Sterility magazine
