However, Dr Anna-Sofia Berglund said that since these were relatively rare cancers and the increase in the risk was small, women should not be alarmed by her findings. Furthermore, endometriosis appeared to reduce the risk of cervical cancer in comparison to the general population, and there was no increased risk of ovarian cancer in women who had had a hysterectomy.
Dr Berglund, a resident obstetrics and gynaecology doctor at Huddinge University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden, looked at the Nationwide Swedish Inpatient Register and identified 64,492 women who had been discharged from hospital with endometriosis between 1969 and 2000. The data were linked with the National Swedish Cancer Register to identify all cases of cancer.
She found that there was no overall risk of cancer amongst these women, but that there was a slightly increased risk of certain types of cancer. A woman's risk of developing ovarian cancer increased by just under a half during her lifetime, for endocrine tumours it increased by about a third, for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma it increased by about a quarter and for brain tumours the increase was just over a fifth. The risk of developing cervical cancer was reduced by roughly a third.
Dr Berglund said: "It is very important to keep these findings in perspective. The overall risk of cancer does not increase after endometriosis, and where there are slightly increased risks they are in some of the less common cancers. For instance, in Sweden just under 20 women in every 100,000 develop ovarian cancer each year there are about 855 cases a year. My study shows that for women with endometriosis, another eight women in 100,000 could develop ovarian cance
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Contact: Emma Mason
wordmason@aol.com
44-0-1376-563090
European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology
2-Jul-2003