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THURSDAY, July 3, 2003 (HealthDayNews) -- Women with endometriosis are at increased risk of developing ovarian cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, endocrine and brain cancers.
So says a Swedish study presented July 2 at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Madrid, Spain.
But researcher Dr. Anna-Sofia Berglund adds women shouldn't be alarmed by the finding because the increased risk is small and involves relatively rare cancers.
The study found endometriosis seems to reduce the risk of cervical cancer in comparison to the general population. It also concluded that women with endometriosis who had a hysterectomy do not have an increased risk of ovarian cancer.
The study looked at 64,492 women discharged from hospital with endometriosis between 1969 and 2000. While there was no overall increased risk of cancer in these women, there was a slightly increased risk of certain kinds of cancer.
The risk of developing ovarian cancer increased by just under half during a lifetime, by about a third for endocrine tumors, by about a quarter for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and by about a fifth for brain tumors.
The study also found women who developed endometriosis between the ages of 20 and 40 had a higher risk than other age groups of developing ovarian cancer and that the cancer developed earlier in their lives than in other women in the general population.
Berglund says in a news release that the study does not show that endometriosis causes cancer. The true connection between endometriosis and cancer is not known.
More information
Here's where you can learn more about endometriosis.
