Low- and high-dose pills are equally protective against ovarian cancer.

Abstract

This article discusses two separate population-based case-control studies on the protective function of low- and high-dose oral contraceptives (OCs) against ovarian cancer. Overall the ovarian cancer study found that women who have ever used the common types of OCs which contain low doses of estrogen and progestin are 50% less likely than never-users of the pill to develop ovarian cancer. In addition it was found that this level of protection is identical to that afforded by older OCs with higher hormone doses. These findings suggest that the ability of the OCs to prevent ovarian cancer has been unaffected by changes made in the pill formulations to make the method safer. Similarly evidence from the benign ovarian tumor study suggests that ever-use of OCs reduces the odds of non-cancerous ovarian tumors by 20% and the decrease in risk is independent of estrogen dose. In both studies the magnitude of protection increased with longer durations of pill use.