Egg Harvesting Raises Risk of Ovarian Tumors

Thursday, October 27, 2011
Wesley J. Smith

IVF has been painted as a virtually risk free enterprise. But we haven’t much studied the long term impact on children–who appear to have higher rates of certain health issues than those conceived through the natural process–or on women who have had their ovaries hyper-stimulated to produce eggs. Now, a new study indicates that sub fertile women who were stimulated have higher rates of ovarian tumors than sub fertile women who did not go through the IVF process. From the Human Reproduction Journal Report:

The long-term risk for ovarian malignancies (ovarian cancer and borderline ovarian tumours) is twice as high among women who undergo ovarian stimulation for IVF compared with subfertile women not treated with IVF. This is due to the increased incidence of borderline ovarian tumours, according to the research, published online today (Thursday Oct. 27) in Europe’s leading reproductive medicine journal Human Reproduction...

Prof van Leeuwen said: “We found that of the 25,152 subfertile women included in the analysis 77 had ovarian malignancies. Surprisingly, of the 61 women who had ovarian malignancies in the IVF treatment group, 31 had borderline ovarian cancer and 30 had invasive ovarian cancer. This proportion of ovarian borderline tumours was unusually high. Borderline ovarian tumours are tumours with a low malignancy potential, which means that they are not fatal, but would require extensive surgery and cause substantial morbidity.”

the rest