Women’s likelihood of getting cancer raised if they’re infertile at 30, research finds

INFERTILITY could increase the chance of cancer in midlife by almost a fifth, research suggests.

The study of more than three million women of childbearing age found that those with fertility problems were 18 per cent more likely to develop the disease. Scientists from Stanford University, in the US, said it was not possible to show whether infertility – or treatment for it – was a cause of cancer.

The four-year study of women who were in their 30s when monitoring began found that those who suffered infertility problems were 18 per cent more likely to develop any type of cancer during the period. They said the explanation could be down to an underlying mechanism that increased the risk of cancer and infertility.

Researchers stressed that the overall risk of cancer at this stage in life remained low.

Overall, those with fertility problems had an absolute risk of 2 per cent, compared with that of 1.7 per cent among other women.

The findings were published in the journal Human Reproduction.

Dr Gayathree Murugappan, the leader of the research, said: “We do not know the causes of the increase in cancer that we found in this study, whether it might be the infertility itself, the causes of the infertility, or the infertility treatment. We can only show there is an association between them.

“In the future, we hope that we will be able to understand why infertile women are at higher risk of cancer.”

Researchers analysed data from 64,345 women who had been identified as being infertile by diagnosis, testing or treatment between 2003 and 2016. They were compared with more than 3.1 m women who were not infertile and who were seeking routine gynaecological care.

There were 1,310 cancers diagnosed among the infertile women (2 per cent) and 53,116 among the control group who were not infertile (1.7 per cent).