How do different types of hormonal birth control impact breast cancer risk?

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2025-10-31 02:00

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The use of hormonal birth control is linked to a slightly increased risk of breast cancer and this risk varies depending on the type of birth control, according to international research. The team used Swedish health data to monitor breast cancer cases among over 2 million premenopausal women from 2006-2019 and compare against their birth control usage. For every 7752 women using hormonal birth control, the researchers say one additional case of breast cancer was recorded. They say the pill and other options containing desogestrel were linked to a higher risk than those containing levonorgestrel, while birth control injections and NuvaRing were not linked to an increased breast cancer risk.

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Journal/
conference: JAMA Oncology

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Uppsala University, Sweden

Funder: This project was funded by the Swedish Cancer Society (22 2222 Pj, 21 0447 FE, 22 2320 Pj), the Sjöberg Foundation, and the Swedish Research Council (2023-02983). The computations were enabled by resources in project sens2021564 provided by the National Academic Infrastructure for Supercomputing in Sweden at UPPMAX, funded by the Swedish Research Council through grant agreement No. 2022-06725.

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