Pill’s Cancer Risk Temporary, Study Says

The slightly increased risk of cervical cancer and heart disease assumed by women who take oral contraceptives is a temporary one that subsides after they stop taking the pill, British researchers said Thursday.

In a 25-year study of women who take oral contraceptives, they found that 10 or more years after women stopped using the pill, the increased risk was negligible.

The research should reassure women that the pill, especially modern formulations with lower levels of hormones than the one studied, is very safe.

The study confirmed previous research that showed that current or recent users of the pill did face a slightly higher risk of death from certain diseases, the team from the Imperial Cancer Research Fund and the Royal College of General Practitioners said.

“Our results suggest that most of the effects of oral contraceptives on mortality occur in current or recent users and that few, if any, effects persist 10 years after stopping use,” professor Valerie Beral of the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford and colleagues wrote in the British Medical Journal.

Women in the study used a combined pill containing 50 micrograms of estrogen, or a higher dose of the hormone than exists now in oral contraceptives.

As a result, current pill users face an even lower risk of death than those who were observed in the study, Dr. Clifford Kay of the Royal College of General Practitioners told a media briefing.

The researchers confirmed earlier studies showing that the incidence of breast cancer was slightly higher among current and recent users of the pill containing 50 micrograms of estrogen.

But this risk was negligible 10 or more years after women stopped taking the pill.