Swedish study says hormonal birth control slightly raises breast cancer risk, but experts note the increase is small.

As misinformation about women’s health spreads faster than ever, doctors say new research on the risks of hormonal birth control underscores the challenge of communicating nuance in the social media age.

The study, which was conducted in Sweden and tracked more than 2 million teenage girls and women less than age 50 for more than a decade, found that hormonal contraception remains safe overall, but also found small differences in breast cancer risk based on the hormones used in the formulation.

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In addition, the researchers observed a small, short-term rise in breast cancer diagnoses among current or recent users. Those findings are consistent with prior large studies, including a 2017 Danish registry analysis and a 2023 meta-analysis.

It was published online on October 30 in JAMA Oncology.

Doctors say these study results won’t change how they advise patients and that women should not stop using their birth control.

Still, TikTok is flooded with factually incomplete warnings that contraceptives cause cancer and are as dangerous as smoking. Reproductive health advocates warn that studies like this can easily be taken out of context online and be reduced to a single alarming number.

Case in point: The study reported that women who had used hormonal birth control had about a 24 percent higher rate of breast cancer than women who hadn’t. But because breast cancer is still uncommon in younger women, that works out to an increase from roughly 54 to 67 breast cancer cases per 100,000 women per year – about 13 extra cases per 100,000 women, or about one extra case per 7,800 users of hormonal contraceptives per year.

Source: aljazeera