Infertility Treatment Drugs
USED IN: Medication
Despite the substantial evidence linking HRT and oral contraceptive use with increased incidence of breast cancer, neither the condition of subfertility nor the use of infertility-treatment (or ovulation-stimulation) drugs appears to have a clear link to the disease (Gauthier, 2004; Klip, 2000; Orgeas, 2009). This is true also when the study involves infertile women who are also BRCA carriers (Kotsopoulos, 2008). Where the link has been found, it has been for women who have been treated with high doses of clomiphene citrate.
Two studies found increased risk of breast cancer for women who had been treated for ovarian infertility with drugs including gonadotropins or clomiphene citrate. However, the results were significant only when the incidence of breast cancer was compared with the general population of women, but not with the more appropriate control of women with ovarian infertility who have not been treated with fertility drugs (Brinton, 2004; dos Santos Silva, 2009). Two other studies, however, have found small but statistically significant increases in breast cancer rates in women taking clomiphene citrate compared with rates for infertile women taking no infertility treatment (Calderon-Margalit, 2009; Lerner-Geva, 2006). Looking at a smaller subgroup of women whose infertility was not ovarian in origin and who underwent multiple treatments with high doses of clomiphene citrate, research showed this group to have a substantially increased risk of later developing breast cancer (Orgeas, 2009).
