Women who have their fallopian tubes tied to prevent pregnancy have a "substantially reduced" rate of ovarian cancer, Harvard Medical School researchers reported.
The protective effect also may occur with other female sterility techniques such as hysterectomy, said Dr. Susan Hankinson and her co-authors in the Journal of the American Medical Association.In a study of 121,700 woman nurses, the researchers found women who underwent tubal ligation sterility had two-thirds lower risk of developing ovarian cancer during the 12-year study than other women.
The risk was about one-third lower among women who underwent hysterectomy than the other women, the researchers found.
Ovarian cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer death among women in the United States, claiming about 12,000 lives per year and affecting between 1 percent and 2 percent of all women. Fewer than 40 percent survive five years after diagnosis.