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Review
. 2021 Nov 12;13(22):5654.
doi: 10.3390/cancers13225654.

Oral Contraceptive Use and Breast Cancer Risk Assessment: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Case-Control Studies, 2009-2020

Agnieszka Barańska  1 , Agata Błaszczuk  2 , Wiesław Kanadys  3 , Maria Malm  1 , Katarzyna Drop  4 , Małgorzata Polz-Dacewicz  2
Affiliations
Review

Oral Contraceptive Use and Breast Cancer Risk Assessment: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Case-Control Studies, 2009-2020

Agnieszka Barańska et al. Cancers (Basel). .

Abstract

To perform a meta-analysis of case-control studies that addressed the association between oral contraceptive pills (OC) use and breast cancer (BrCa), PubMED (MEDLINE), Embase, and the Cochrane Library were searched to identify case-control studies of OC and BrCa published between 2009 and 2020. We used the DerSimonian-Laird method to compute pooled odds ratios (ORs) and confidence intervals (CIs), and the Mantel-Haenszel test to assess the association between OC use and cancer. Forty-two studies were identified that met the inclusion criteria and we included a total of 110,580 women (30,778 into the BrCa group and 79,802 into the control group, of which 15,722 and 38,334 were using OC, respectively). The conducted meta-analysis showed that the use of OC was associated with a significantly increased risk of BrCa in general, OR = 1.15, 95% CI: 1.01 to 1.31, p = 0.0358. Regarding other risk factors for BrCa, we found that increased risk was associated significantly with early menarche, nulliparous, non-breastfeeding, older age at first parity, postmenopause, obesity, smoking, and family history of BrCa. Despite our conclusion that birth control pills increase the cancer risk being supported by extensive previous studies and meta-analyzes, further confirmation is required.

Keywords: breast cancer; breast malignancies; oral contraceptives; risk; risk factors.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flowchart of the selection procedure for studies included in the current review and meta-analysis.
Figure 2
Figure 2
A forest plot and the summary odds ratios for the relationship between BrCa risk and ever OC use: case-control studies conducted 2009–2020 in alphabetical order.
Figure 3
Figure 3
A funnel plot of publication bias in the meta-analysis of the relationship between BrCa risk and ever use of OC.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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