Oral contraceptives and risk of ovarian cancer

Among a large cohort of married, female, registered nurses under 55 years of age, oral contraceptive (OC) use was examined in women with ovarian cancer and 470 age-matched controls. Use of OCs before the diagnosis of cancer was reported by 28% of the women with ovarian cancer and 33% of the controls, yielding a relative risk of 0.8 (95% confidence limits 0.4-1.5). This apparent inverse relationship was attributable to a large effect in women 35 years of age or younger (relative risk = 0.2, 95% confidence limits 0.1-1.0). Patients with ovarian cancer were 2.2 times more likely than controls to be nulliparous. These data provide reassurance that OC use is not likely to be associated with any major increase in risk of ovarian cancer, but suggest that future studies of this relationship need to consider the possible confounding effect of infertility.