News | Fertility-Preserving Benefits of GnRH Agonists During Chemotherapy May Be Overestimated
New research from Sweden's Karolinska Institutet suggests that GnRH agonists, commonly used to protect the ovaries of women with cancer, may not improve the chance of having a child after cancer treatment. The study was published in eClinicalMedicine.
GnRH agonists are sometimes given during chemotherapy to women with breast cancer and other cancers. Earlier small trials suggested that they could prevent amenorrhea, or the loss of menstruation, and preserve fertility. However, those trials could not assess the chance of having a child after cancer treatment. They were also not double-blind: all participants knew whether they had received the medicine, so treated women may have been more motivated to try to conceive.
In the new study, researchers used Swedish population-based registry data to compare live birth after cancer treatment among nearly 25,000 women ages 15 to 45 who received chemotherapy. Of these, 1.5% also received a GnRH agonist.
After adjusting for age, cancer type, previous childbirth, and other factors, researchers found no difference in the probability of having a child during follow-up between women who received a GnRH agonist and those who did not.
Associate Professor Kenny Rodriguez-Wallberg of Karolinska Institutet's Department of Oncology-Pathology, the study's first author, said it was the largest and most comprehensive study of the topic to date and challenged current use of GnRH agonists as a fertility-preservation measure for women with cancer.
Senior author Frida Lundberg, a researcher in the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Karolinska Institutet, said more rigorous placebo-controlled, double-blind randomized clinical trials are needed to evaluate the fertility-preserving effectiveness of these medicines.
News | Fertility-Preserving Benefits of GnRH Agonists During Chemotherapy May Be Overestimated
News | Fertility-Preserving Benefits of GnRH Agonists During Chemotherapy May Be Overestimated
New research from Sweden's Karolinska Institutet suggests that GnRH agonists, commonly used to protect the ovaries of women with cancer, may not improve the chance of having a child after cancer treatment. The study was published in eClinicalMedicine.
GnRH agonists are sometimes given during chemotherapy to women with breast cancer and other cancers. Earlier small trials suggested that they could prevent amenorrhea, or the loss of menstruation, and preserve fertility. However, those trials could not assess the chance of having a child after cancer treatment. They were also not double-blind: all participants knew whether they had received the medicine, so treated women may have been more motivated to try to conceive.
In the new study, researchers used Swedish population-based registry data to compare live birth after cancer treatment among nearly 25,000 women ages 15 to 45 who received chemotherapy. Of these, 1.5% also received a GnRH agonist.
After adjusting for age, cancer type, previous childbirth, and other factors, researchers found no difference in the probability of having a child during follow-up between women who received a GnRH agonist and those who did not.
Associate Professor Kenny Rodriguez-Wallberg of Karolinska Institutet's Department of Oncology-Pathology, the study's first author, said it was the largest and most comprehensive study of the topic to date and challenged current use of GnRH agonists as a fertility-preservation measure for women with cancer.
Senior author Frida Lundberg, a researcher in the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Karolinska Institutet, said more rigorous placebo-controlled, double-blind randomized clinical trials are needed to evaluate the fertility-preserving effectiveness of these medicines.
Source:
Collected online