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Infertility
JackieMac824
member
Clomid = Cancer (SAIFW)
JackieMac824
member
in Infertility
I was watching the news last night and they are now saying reports are coming out that women who took Clomid years ago (i.e. when it first came out, 30 years ago) now have uterine cancer and they think the clomid is linked to the cancer - did anyone hear this - thought???
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Re: Clomid = Cancer (SAIFW)
Currently pg with our 1st after 6.5 yrs of IF (thank you IVF)
My IF/Everything Blog
There's No Crying in Baseball
***My posts are always SAIFW**
I read this online when I went on it at first - thankfully not on it anymore.....
SCARY stuff. The rest of the meds I didn't find anything on cancer though (Lupron, Estrace, Follistim, Cetrotide..)..but that's only the ones I researched (computer junkie....sadly...!)
Oh god, not another thing I need to worry about later on down the road. Like I don't already have enough stuff on my mind. Geez!
Not only do we have to deal w/ i/f now we have to worry about getting cancer because we took clomid to get pg? Hopefully they worked the kinks out yrs ago.
I also wonder if it's the same drug from 30 yrs ago. I would think no, but I don't know?
Delestrogen also has cancer warnings ALL over the instruction/warning sheet. It really makes me nervous, luckily I'm only doing that 2x a week.
A few things to consider:
How does this compare to the study earlier this year that the long-term health effects of fertility drugs were negligible?
What doses and amounts of time were these women on Clomid?
Were they monitored?
Did the study account for any family history of cancer, especially of a reproductive kind, for these subjects?
How big and long was the study?
This is why I hate stories that come out on the news. They give maybe 1% of the entire study, throw out some stats, and expect everyone to just drink them in.
Ditto all of this. A lot of "studies" are so poorly constructed an monitored, especially those that link things to cancer, that I am usually very skeptical of their results.
Here is a link to the CBS story:
https://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/12/11/earlyshow/health/main4661991.shtml
CBS) A new study suggests that some fertility drugs may increase the risk of developing uterine cancer.
"One of the most important (drugs) that was addressed in the study is Clomiphene," Early Show medical contributor Dr. Holly Phillips told co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez Thursday. "It's also known as Clomid, and it is probably the most common fertility drug used today.
"The way Clomid works is it makes the body think its estrogen levels are lower than they actually are, and that helps with ovulation to release more eggs. That helps women become pregnant."
The study, which was done at Hadassah-Hebrew University in Jerusalem, "was significant," Phillips said, "in that it followed women for 30 years and it looked at their entire lifetime risk of developing cancers. And it did find a three-to-four time increase in uterine cancer in women who had taken this drug.
"This isn't the first time we've seen a link between things that modulate estrogen and uterine cancers, but this is one of the first times we've seen this type of link with the fertility drugs.
Still, Phillips cautioned, "previous studies have not found a link, and they've said that (fertility drugs are) completely safe, so I think what we really have to take from this is that more study is needed.
"But these drugs are so common right now. Many, many women are taking fertility drugs, and I don't want them to feel uncomfortable or as though they shouldn't take them. It's just that they need to be monitored.
"I think the process of taking hormones is a scary one in many ways. Again, Clomiphene isn't a hormone, but it changes the way our body processes, certainly processes hormones, so I think it's one of those things we need to consider carefully."
******************
OK, my take on it - I am the first to say that more research is always needed. As more and more people take drugs like clomid and drugs like gonadotropins, the appearance of potential long term side effects will start to pop up.
But I can't help but wonder if these findings are similar to the findings about the increased risk of cancer in women who undergo IVF... the fact is, if you do not experience pregnancy, there is a statistically significant (significant=meaningful, not necessarily large) increase in your risk of cancer. Women who undergo IVF are (duh) less likely to experience pregnancy compare to women who do not. So, is the increased risk between the two sets of women due to the drugs? Or the lower rate of pregnancy? I would imagine there are many confounding variables here.
For instance, this is from the American Cancer Society report on Cancer Facts and Figures, 2007 - regarding uterine cancer: (https://www.cancer.org/downloads/STT/caff2007PWSecured.pdf)
Here are some interesting quotes from the actual study described on CBS: (you can read it here: https://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/kwn318v1#BIB39)
So this is just one study that may or may not indicate that clomid increases your risk of uterine cancer. That said, all drugs carry the potential for long term side effects.
I am a runner, knitter, scientist, DE-IVF veteran, and stage III colon cancer survivor.
Thanks for posting the story, epphd.
An interesting tidbit in there is that the risk of uterine cancer increased 3- to 4-fold. If your baseline risk is .01% (I have no idea what the average uterine cancer risk is, but I think it's pretty small), do we really need to worry about it "jumping" to .04%?
I was actually told by a breast cancer survivor that from the people she's met with breast cancer, a good percentage had taken Clomid. I asked my office, and they said they hadn't heard of such link.
My doctor did tell me there are studies indicating that Clomid may by linked to Ovarian cancer, b/c the med is forcing your body to ovulate. With each release of an egg, a person's chances of having ovarian cancer increases. However, by mestrating at a early age, you ovulate more than some one that went through puberty later. There are other studies that cotradict these results.
"If we couldn't laugh we would all go insane" -- Jimmy Buffett
Dr. Loretta, the rate of uterine cancers by age brackets are as follows:
0-39: 0.6% (1:1652)
40-59: 0.7% (1:142)
60-69: 0.81% (1:124)
70+: 1.28% (1:78)
So even a tripling of risk - and keep in mind this is ONE study with LOTS of shortcomings - would mean that the risk of uterine cancer under 40 would go grom 0.6% to 1.8%, and 40-60 would go from 0.7% to 2.1%.
I'm not going to lose sleep over my three cycles of clomid!
I am a runner, knitter, scientist, DE-IVF veteran, and stage III colon cancer survivor.
Just so people don't freak out about this (and worry that by doing IVF they are experience 20 ovulations and therefore are at risk of breast cancer!!
a. there is no specific study that links any of these drugs to cancer definitively. the risk is not getting pregnant and living longer.
b. it is not the act of ovulation itself that "increases" risk, but the exposure of your body to estrogen during the first half of the menstural cycle. So comparing an ovulating woman to a woman on clomid, the risk per cycle should be identical - each experiences an increase in estrogen, and each, as a result ovulates. Annovulation and the NEED for clomid is associated with lower overall rates of pregnancy and THAT is what increases risk.
I am a runner, knitter, scientist, DE-IVF veteran, and stage III colon cancer survivor.
Something to think about is how many women with PCOS are given clomid. PCOS by itself is an increased risk for several cancers, due to the hormone imbalance, so are these women getting cancer due to clomid, or due to being predisposed.
it doesn't seem to be proving a causal relationship...