Teens and Women on the Pill Risk Breast Cancer, Ground-Breaking Study Says

Women who use the birth control pill, especially if they start under age 18, run a high risk of getting breast cancer, a major study says.

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Oral contraceptive use has been closely linked to a certain deadly type of breast cancer, a leading cancer journal stated recently, and the results may prove to challenge the breast cancer research community.

A study concerning the deadly “triple negative” breast cancer, involving more than 1200 women aged 20 – 45, found a “distinct etiology,” or cause and effect, for women who used oral contraception for longer than a year, and an even stronger correlation for women who began using it before the age of 18.

The study was published in the April 2009 Cancer, Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention over a five-year period. The study’s main author, Jessica Dolle, and other researchers at the Seattle-based Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, found that oral contraceptive use for a year or more “was associated with a 2.7-fold increased risk for triple-negative breast cancer.” Triple negative breast cancer is a subtype of cancer associated with a high mortality and has little hope for a cure.

Abortion Also a Cause

“Specifically,” the study said, “older age, family history of breast cancer, earlier menarche [beginning of menstruation] age, induced abortion, and oral contraceptive use were associated with an increased risk for breast cancer.”

“Our study has the strength of being population based and is the largest of its kind to evaluate breast cancer subtypes and etiologic [causation] differences in young women,” the study said.

In women 40 years of age and older, the danger was greater, the study said. Oral contraceptive use for one or more years “was associated with a four-fold increased risk for triple-negative breast cancer.”

The National Cancer Institute, on the other hand, has long denied any real connection between oral contraceptives and breast cancer. Its website cites one study of oral contraceptives which showed a “slightly elevated risk” for breast cancer. Another study cited showed that oral contraceptives “did not significantly increase” the chance of breast cancer. A third study mentioned on the website admitted only that women who were diagnosed within five years of using the pill, especially younger women, were the most affected with breast cancer.

Breast cancer is the leading type of cancer among women age 20-59, and the most common cause of cancer deaths in this group. Many experts are now claiming that crucial information is being withheld from women who could otherwise avoid this disease.

Women in Berwyn, Cicero, Stickney, N. Riverside, Forest Park, Maywood and other nearby suburbs in the western Chicago, IL area who need more information about the risks of using the birth control pill and its link to breast cancer should call WomanCare Services, at 708-795-6000.