Study Connects Breast Cancer Risk to Mirena IUD

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  • kamm
    kamm Member Posts: 140
    edited July 2014

    No offense but not exactly reliable research if they didn't control for other causes as self reported. The fact that it's published in some injury lawyers news memo doesn't exactly lend credibility to it either.  Not to mention a difference of less than three hundred people may not even be statiscally significant. To many "studies" are talked about way earlier than they should be before they're even replicated once let alone more than once. Just saying.

  • lekker
    lekker Member Posts: 594
    edited July 2014

    Kamm - the study was actually published in Obstetrics&Gynecology. Here's a link to the abstract

    http://journals.lww.com/greenjournal/Abstract/2014...

    The part I find really interesting is that while they found a 20% higher than expected rate of breast cancer, the rates of pancreatic, uterine, ovarian and lung cancers were 30% to over 50% lower than expected.  Also, the study population was made up of women who had the Mirena inserted specifically to deal with heavy menstrual bleeding - which in my non-professional opinion seems to indicate that they were already dealing with a hormonal imbalance of some kind.  If the original imbalance was estrogen dominance, was that what actually made them more likely to get breast cancer?  Who knows.

  • curveball
    curveball Member Posts: 3,040
    edited July 2014

    @lekker

    heavy menstrual bleeding doesn't necessarily mean there is a hormonal imbalance. It is also frequently caused (as mine was) by uterine fibroids.

  • lekker
    lekker Member Posts: 594
    edited July 2014

    Curveball - I assumed that fibroids were related to hormone levels because I was told that mine would most likely shrink/go away after menopause.  Also I assumed it was the hormones in the iud that lessened the bleeding whether from fibroids or another source. Before I found my BC, my obgyn was offering me the mirena to try to help my bleeding fibroid. 

     I found this on womenshealth.gov...

    Because no one knows for sure what causes fibroids, we also don't know what causes them to grow or shrink. We do know that they are under hormonal control — both estrogen and progesterone. They grow rapidly during pregnancy, when hormone levels are high. They shrink when anti-hormone medication is used. They also stop growing or shrink once a woman reaches menopause.

  • curveball
    curveball Member Posts: 3,040
    edited July 2014

    @lekker, well I guess I learned something new. I don't remember my gynecologist saying anything about the fibroids growing and shrinking as hormone levels change. I do remember her saying they would shrink after menopause, and they did. I think you are right that it's the hormone in the IUD that reduces bleeding.

  • kamm
    kamm Member Posts: 140
    edited July 2014

    Fibroids do respond to hormones with shrinking and growing. It is the localized hormone that causes the reduction in the endometrium which in turn reduces bleeding. But I would imagine it would also cause changes in fibroids.

  • vlnrph
    vlnrph Member Posts: 1,632
    edited July 2014

    Thanks for the link to the original report: I was skeptical of information from an injury lawyer site also but the article was surprisingly non-sensational. Significant to note this was a very large & lengthy observational data analysis from Finland. It will be interesting to see if similar trends are found elsewhere when other known risk factors are taken into consideration.

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