IVF Treatment Safe, Does not Increase Cancer Risk

In vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment is safe for mothers and does not put them at higher risk of breast and gynecological cancer, a new study says.

Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) or the different artificial methods used to help women conceive have been surrounded in controversies since ART was introduced in the U.S. in 1981. In vitro fertilisation (IVF), intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), cryopreservation and intrauterine insemination (IUI) are some of the ART methods commonly used. 

Previous studies that looked into the safety of IVF have linked the procedure to breast cancer and ovarian cancer. A study published in June 2012, found young women who underwent fertility treatment at the age of 24 at a higher risk of developing breast cancer than others who adopted the treatment by the age of 40. Another study published in the Journal of The National Cancer Institute in July 2012 found women who used ovulation-stimulating fertility drugs and conceived at 10 weeks or more to have an increased risk of developing breast cancer before turning 50 than the women who didn't conceive after following the medication.

To prove the safety of IVF treatment, lead author of the current study, Louise Brinton from the National Cancer Institute in Rockville, Maryland and colleagues collected medical records of women who adopted IVF treatment, between 1994 and 2011. The data included  more than 67,600 women who took the treatment and nearly 20,000 women who wanted to undergo IVF treatment but didn't receive it, Reuters Health reported.

Of the total women, more than 1,500 were diagnosed with cancer by 2011.The researchers couldn't find the IVF treatment posing any additional risks of breast or endometrial cancer to women. However, they found the risks of getting ovarian cancer increasing with an increase in the number of IVF treatments. According to the experts, the condition of the ovary, more than the IVF treatment should be blamed for that occurrence.

"Infertile women have a primary problem with their ovaries and IVF has nothing to do with it," Dr. Bengt Källén, director of the Tornblad Institute at Lund University, Sweden, who was not involved in the study, told Reuters Health. "It's a rather difficult thing to disentangle if there is an effect from the hormones or from the IVF procedure."

The study has been published in the journal Fertility and Sterility.