Is it true that IVF Therapy Increases Cancer Risk in Women?

Medical Video: Fertility drugs may raise or reduce breast cancer risk, depending on success - IN60

Do you want to have children but until now you are not pregnant? Nowadays there are lots of treatments or ways to make it easier for a woman to get pregnant. One of them is in vitro fertilization (IVF). IVF therapy is classified as very expensive and consists of various complex stages, it is known that only 5% of couples find it difficult to have children who then carry out this process.

What is IVF therapy?

More than 200 thousand babies have been born through IVF processes since this process was introduced in 1981. Under normal circumstances, the process of fertilization between a woman's egg and male sperm occurs in a woman's body. But many things affect the success of the fertilization process that occurs in the body. If fertilization occurs, the pregnancy will occur. Whereas, in the process of IVF, fertilization occurs outside the woman's body and if fertilization is successful, the fetus will be put back into the mother's womb to grow and develop until the time of birth.

But the process of IVF cannot be done carelessly because this process can also cause various side effects for the health of the body. There are several things that cause you to be encouraged to do IVF:

You are diagnosed as having infertility or infertility caused by various factors
The fallopian tubes or the outlet canal are closed because of bodily dysfunction that occurs
Your partner has fertility problems
Not successful in getting pregnant despite taking fertility drugs or doing intrauterine insemination (IUI)

The process of IVF is thought to increase the risk of cancer in women

Until now many have conducted research related to the risk of carrying out IVF processes, and the results of their studies vary greatly. There are some who have proven that the medical therapy process can increase the risk of breast cancer, uterine cancer and ovarian cancer.

A study involving 255,786 women who carried out IVF in the UK from 1990 to 2010 and saw their development for 8 years, found 386 cases of ovarian cancer. From the results of this study it is known that:

Women who still don't have babies after undergoing IVF processing have a higher risk of developing ovarian cancer.
The risk of ovarian cancer will be even higher if multiple IVFs are processed, the more often the more risky.
Women who are too young to process IVF are also at risk of developing cancer.
Whereas women who carry out this process due to their infertile partners are not at risk for cancer.

Another study in the Netherlands in 2011 found that women who run IVF tended to experience ovarian tumors in the future. Similar to the results of previous studies, a study conducted in Norway in 2014 stated that there was a relationship between the process of IVF and an increased risk of breast cancer. The risk of breast cancer is owned by a group of women who process IVF at a young age.

Why does IVF cause cancer?

Infertility can occur in various causes and is influenced by many factors. For some women, even the reasons and causes are not found. Women who undergo treatment to improve fertility or programs to have children by medical means and drugs are at risk of experiencing some types of cancer. Women who have been known to be infertile, have a high risk of developing breast cancer, ovarian cancer and uterine cancer.

Experts reveal that the process of IVF can increase hormones that stimulate the ovaries or ovaries, hormones that appear namely estrogen and progesterone. Changes in the levels of sexual hormones in the body can cause breast cancer, ovarian cancer and uterine cancer. Another assumption that arises is that by carrying out IVF, the egg production produced by the ovary will increase and this will cause an increase in ovarian cancer. For that, if you plan to do IVF therapy and various therapies to help fertility, discuss this with a specialist doctor to prevent bad side effects from happening.

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