Medical research marches on. Scarcely a day goes by without hopeful news springing from a laboratory somewhere.
Just the other day, a small headline on Page A2 of The Star declared: “Progestin cuts risk of cancer: Study”.
Should we all be taking progestin? Curiosity aroused, I decided this story warranted a closer look.
As the 150-word wire story quickly explained, progestin is a hormone used in birth control pills, so this was news of special interest to women.
Good news, too.
A “new study” has found the risk of ovarian cancer is cut by 50 per cent in women who take contraceptive pills containing progestin and estrogen.
But for women taking pills that had high levels of progestin, the risk was reduced an extra 50 per cent, according to Patricia G. Moorman of Duke University Medical Center.
The researcher was quoted as saying the study findings, published in the Journal of the U.S. National Cancer Institute, might lead to “new protective” drugs against ovarian cancer.
Ovarian cancer is the sixth most common cancer among women, other than skin cancers. But why so few details about this apparently promising research?
Turns out The Star had run less than one-third of Associated Press science writer Paul Recer’s story.
Missing was the reporter’s explanation that the project was “a re-examination” of medical and oral contraceptive histories of more than 3,200 women who had first been studied between 1980 and 1982.
“The group included 390 women who developed ovarian cancer and 2,865 who did not,” Recer wrote.
“It compared the ovarian cancer outcome among women who did not take the pill and with women who took different formulations of the contraceptive pill.”
Four groups were surveyed: women who took no pills; those who took pills high in estrogen and progestin; women who took pills high in one or the other hormone; and women who took pills with low levels of both.
But as Recer reported, researcher Moorman said the birth control pills used by women in the study two decades ago “are not now commonly available.” That’s because researchers found that pills with lower hormone levels were effective contraceptives, with fewer bad side effects.
One wonders what side effects women might endure if they took a new drug, loaded with progestin, to prevent ovarian cancer.
My next port of call was the Duke University Web site, where a news release said the researchers hope to “achieve maximum protection against ovarian cancer, while minimizing side effects.”
The release also mentioned a jolting fact missing from the AP account. It said: Researcher Joellen Schildkraut, who led the study, “does caution that while pills that are higher in progestin are protective against ovarian cancer, they might increase risk of certain types of breast cancer.”
Schildkraut said this “consideration” needs to be studied further. “Other agents, such as vitamin D, may be able to capitalize on this prevention pathway without increasing breast cancer risk.”
The news release also warned of “limitations” in the study. There were possible “misclassifications” of some pills and “a lack of formulations and dosages for all oral contraceptives.”
And women in the 1980-82 study were young (44.1) compared to the average age (59) of all women who develop ovarian cancer.
Frankly, Star readers were shortchanged by this skimpy story about research findings that seem modest at best. The “Progestin-cuts-risks-of-cancer” headline has lost its early glow with this reader, for sure.
