In Utero Exposure to Hormonal Contraception and Mortality in Offspring with and without Cancer: A Nationwide Cohort Study

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

Documents

  • Fulltext

    Final published version, 677 KB, PDF document

  • Lina Steinrud Mørch
  • Mads Gamborg
  • Caroline Hallas Hemmingsen
  • Charlotte Wessel Skovlund
  • Kjær, Susanne Krüger
  • Marie Hargreave

Approximately 400 million women of reproductive age use hormonal contraceptives worldwide. Eventually, pregnancy sometimes occurs due to irregular use. Use in early pregnancy is found to be associated with child morbidities including cancer, the main reason for disease-related death in children. Here, we add the missing piece about in utero exposure to hormonal contraception and mortality in offspring, including assessments of prognosis in children with cancer. In utero exposure to hormonal contraception may be associated with death since we found a hazard ratio (HR) of 1.22 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.01–1.48) compared to children of mothers with previous use. The HRs were 1.22 (95% CI 0.99–1.13) for oral combined products and 2.92 (95% CI 1.21–7.04) for non-oral progestin-only products. A poorer prognosis was also found in exposed children with leukemia (3.62 (95% CI: 1.33–9.87)). If causal, hormonal contraception in pregnancy seems detrimental for offspring health and a marker of poorer prognosis in children with leukemia.

Original languageEnglish
Article number3163
JournalCancers
Volume15
Issue number12
Number of pages13
ISSN2072-6694
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 by the authors.

    Research areas

  • child mortality, childhood cancer, hormonal contraception, in utero exposure, pharmacoepidemiology, prognosis

ID: 373548450