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In a study byValerie Beral, a professor at Britain's Oxford University , published in The Lancet Oncology journal,a team of researchers pooled data on 27,276 women with endometrial cancer in 36 studies from North America, Europe, Asia, Australia and South Africa to study all the epidemiology data related to the effect of oral contraceptive pills on the endometrial cancer.
The findings of the study were broadly indicative of the protective effect of oral contraceptive pills on the risk of womb cancer in women and are summarized below:
1) This study found that, oral contraceptive pills give long term protection against endometrial cancer.
2) Using the pill for 5 years reducted the risk by about quarter.
3) The protective effect was seen to persist for dacades after the pill was stopped, so women who took pills in their 20s will have reduced chances of womb cancer even in their 50s.
4) In high-income countries, they found, 10 years of oral contraceptive use reduces the risk of developing endometrial cancer before age 75 from 2.3 to 1.3 cases per 100 users.
5) The risk reduction correlates with the number of years a woman used the pill, the study found, and was not affected significantly by other factors such as a woman's reproductive history, body fat levels, ethnicity, or alcohol and tobacco use.
6) The change in the estrogen content of the pills has not affected the protection it provides, and the women who used pills during 1980s with pills having almost half the estrogen levels of pills used in 1960s had similar reduction in the risk of endometrial cancer.
7) The study shows that an estimated 400,000 womb cancer cases had been prevented by use of the pill in wealthy countries the past 50 years, including some 200,000 in the last decade.