Contraceptives

Oral contraceptives and risks-  alarming headlines can often be misleading when it comes to oral
contraceptive research so it pays not to assume anything on first ’skimming’. Rather, investigate a bit more deeply if it’s something that is likely to affect you and your body and your own future management of contraception.  A whisper about ‘new’ evidence on oral contraceptives, either positive or negative,  can generate mass over reaction and exaggeration.  Find out for yourself as much as you can before allowing the results of studies and ‘findings from the latest research’ influence any decision you are about to make about a specific contraceptive you are considering.

One of the agreed benefits of taking combined oral contraceptives that emerged from many global studies over the years,  is that they reduce the risk of ovarian cancer.  It now seems that they may also slightly reduce the risk of colon cancer .  According to lead researcher Dr. Geoffrey C. Kabat, of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York it’s too soon to leap ahead and conclude this yet but in a study of nearly 90,000 Canadian women aged 40- 59, it was found that those who had ever used contraceptive pills were 17 percent less likely to develop colon cancer over the next 16 years.  Interestingly, this was NOT the case for women on HRT (hormone replacement therapy)

These results regarding oral contraceptives were published in the International Journal of Cancer after a breast cancer screening study was carried out on 89,835 Canadian women over a period of 16 years. Studies with smaller groups have also been done in Italy between 1985 and 1996 with similar results.

It seems to me that there are so many other factors to be considered such as lifestyle, weight, medical history of family for colon cancer and not least the various doses of hormones in all the different types of oral contraceptives,  so I think it will be quite a while before any firm statement will be made on this one.