Study - No link between breast cancer, pill

The pill does not raise the risk of breast cancer, not even among women who started taking it early or have close relatives with the disease, a new study found.

Previous research had reached conflicting conclusions, though two of the most recent studies had found a higher risk for some women. And since nearly 80 percent of U.S. women born since 1945 have used oral contraceptives, even a small increase was reason for concern.

In this new study, published in today's New England Journal of Medicine, scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health looked at more than 9,200 women ages 35 to 64 -- a group that includes the first generation of women to take the pill.

"It was a chance to look at women over a lifetime to see what the risk has been," said Robert Spirtas, chief of the contraception and reproductive health branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. "They're just getting to the age where the breast cancer risk is highest."

Researchers in Atlanta, Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Seattle interviewed 4,575 women who had breast cancer and 4,682 who did not. Seventy-seven percent of the cancer patients and 79 percent of the cancer-free women had taken some type of oral contraceptive.