Are patients with PCOS at Increased Risk for Ovarian, Endometrial or Cervical Cancer?

Past studies have suggested that women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) are at increased risk for endometrial cancer (uterine cancer). Whether or not patients with PCOS are at increased risk for other gynecological cancers - such as ovarian or cervical cancer is not clear. Past studies have presented mixed results.

Abu-Zaid A et al. 2024

Authors of a new study set out to systematically examine the relationship between polycystic ovary syndrome and ovarian, endometrial, and cervical cancers using the National Inpatient Sample (NIS) database. The NIS database is the largest publicly available all-payer inpatient care database in the United States.

Authors assessed the database between the years 2016 to 2019 to evaluate association between PCOS and gynecologic cancers. Overall, 15,024,965 patients were analyzed, of whom 56,183 patients were diagnosed with PCOS and 14,968,782 patients did not have PCOS. Among the 91,599 patients diagnosed with gynecologic cancers, there were 286 with PCOS and 91,313 without PCOS.

Multivariate analysis showed that PCOS was significantly associated with a higher risk of endometrial cancer (OR = 3.90, 95 % CI [4.32-4.59], p < 0.0001). There was no significant correlation between PCOS and risk of ovarian cancer (OR = 1.09, 95 % CI [0.89-1.34], p = 0.409) and cervical cancer (OR = 0.83, 95 % CI [0.62-1.11], p = 0.218).

Comments

This is an interesting study and follows the general view that PCOS is associated with an increased risk of uterine (endometrial) cancer but not an increased risk of ovarian or cervical cancer.

Treatments such as birth control pills may reduce the risk of endometrial cancer, although this was not specifically addressed in this study.

REFERENCE

Abu-Zaid A et al. Association between polycystic ovary syndrome and the risk of malignant gynecologic cancers (ovarian, endometrial, and cervical): A population-based study from the U.S.A. National Inpatient Sample 2016-2019. Eur J Obstet Gynecol Reprod Biol. 2024 Jun 23:299:283-288. doi: 10.1016/j.ejogrb.2024.06.031. Online ahead of print.