Birth control pill has lasting protective effects against endometrial cancer

the Oncology Nurse Advisor take:

A new study from researchers at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom reports that oral contraceptives protect against endometrial cancer, and the protective benefit lasts for many years after women stop taking the pills.

Previous studies linked the use of the birth control pill with reduced incidence of endometrial cancer, but whether this continued after the use is discontinued was unknown.

In this study, the researchers used a dataset that included 27,276 women with endometrial cancer and 115,743 women without the disease from 36 epidemiological studies.

They calculated that the risk of endometrial cancer was reduced by approximately 25% for every 5 years of use. Furthermore, the reduced risk persisted for more than 30 years after birth control pills were discontinued.

The decrease in the amount of estrogen birth control pills also did not diminish the protective effects of oral contraceptive use.

An estimated 400,000 cases of endometrial cancer were prevented in developed countries due to the use of birth control pills between 1965 and 2014, with approximately 200,000 cases prevented after 2005.