IVF treatment is not
associated with an increase in breast, cervical or endometrial cancer,
according to analysis of thousands of patient medical records. Ovarian cancer risk
was also examined but too few people with ovarian cancer were included in the
study for a conclusive result to be shown.
Scientists at the National Cancer Institute in Maryland, USA, analysed the
medical records of over 67,000 Israeli women who had IVF procedures between
1994 and 2011. They compared these with the records of nearly 20,000 women who
had not undergone IVF treatments, looking specifically at occurrences of the
four types of cancer.
IVF patients did not have
increased rates of breast, cervical or endometrial cancer. A very small,
non-significant trend of increasing risk of ovarian cancer was seen with
increasing numbers of IVF treatment cycles. Ovarian cancer remained rare
in all patient groups studied, with only 45 cases arising in all the women in
the study.
Speaking to Reuters, Dr Bengt
Källén, director of the Tornblad Institute at Lund University, Sweden,
who was not involved in the study, was among commentators observing that even if
an association between IVF and ovarian cancer was established, correlation did
not mean causation.
'Infertile women have a
primary problem with their ovaries and IVF has nothing to do with it', Dr Källén
said. 'It's a rather difficult thing to disentangle if there is an effect from
the hormones or from the IVF procedure'.
The
result is in contrast to a previous smaller study that analysed Dutch medical
records and
suggested that IVF treatment was linked to breast cancer and ovarian cancer
(see BioNews 631).
'What is surprising all of
us who are working in this area is how almost every study gets a different
answer', Dr Louise Brinton, who led the study, told Reuters. She described her
own study's results as 'fairly reassuring' and recommended that monitoring of IVF
patients should continue.
The study was published in
the journal Fertility and Sterility.
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