Fertility Drugs May Boost Uterine Cancer Risks, Study Finds

A new study from Danish researchers finds the long-term use of certain fertility drugs may increase the risks of developing uterine cancer.

Researchers from the Danish Cancer Society in Copenhagen detected roughly double the usual risk of uterine cancer risk among women who used follicle-stimulating hormone and human menopausal gonadotropin (hMG) for more than 10 years, according to a Reuters news report.

Also, women who took six or more cycles of the drug clomphene to regulate ovulation or six or more cycles of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) after clomphene treatments failed were similarly at increased risk of deadly cancer of the uterus, the researchers found.

The study was based on a group of 54,362 women who underwent fertility treatments from 1965 to 1998 and were followed for an average of 16 years. The researchers compared the use of fertility drugs among 1,241 women who did not develop uterine cancer to 83 women of similar age who did suffer the cancer.

They found that 51 percent of women who used the fertility drugs developed cancer of the uterus, compared to 50 percent who did not take the drugs.

The differences in risk were more apparent when researchers factored in which specific fertility drugs were used and for how long. That is when they determined the use of certain drugs for longer periods of time resulted in a cancer risk that was roughly twice the average.

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