What is the relationship between fertility drugs and breast cancer?
The question of a connection between fertility drugs and breast cancer is a very complicated one. To begin with, most women taking fertility drugs are over 30 and haven’t had a child yet. These factors together already increase their risk of breast cancer. One widely used fertility drug, Clomid (clomiphene citrate), works by causing a woman to ovulate more frequently than usual, producing more hormones to stimulate egg development. A couple of studies suggest that Clomid increases the risk of ovarian cancer since the more often you ovulate, the higher your chances of developing ovarian cancer. However, the connection isn’t clear for breast cancer. Based on the evidence that the amount of estrogen in a woman’s body has a bearing on the risk of breast cancer, fertility drugs and the hormones they contain could promote the development of pre-cancerous cells. However, according to a couple of large studies, a history of infertility drug use was not associated with increased breast cancer r
