Washington — It is the hormone progestin in oral contraceptive pills that provides the highest level of protection against ovarian cancer, according to a new study.
Researchers at the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center in Durham, N.C., found that ovarian cancer risk was cut by about 50 percent in all women taking contraceptive pills containing the hormones estrogen and progestin.
But for women taking pills that had high levels of progestin, the risk was reduced an additional 50 percent, said Patricia Moorman, a Duke University Medical Center researcher and the co-author of a study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
"The take-home message from this study is that oral contraceptives are protective against ovarian cancer and our finding that the high progestin potency effect is a scientific (result) that might lead to new protective" drugs against ovarian cancer, Moorman said.
The study is based on a re-examination of the medical and oral contraceptive histories of more than 3,200 women who took part in a study project conducted from 1980 to 1982. The group included 390 women who developed ovarian cancer and 2,865 who did not. It compared the ovarian cancer outcome among women who did not take the pill and with women who took different formulations of the contraceptive pill.
Moorman said earlier results had proven that pills protect against ovarian cancer, while the new study shows which of two hormones in the pills, estrogen and progestin, is most protective.
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