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ATLANTA -- Oral contraceptive use has been associated with a reduced overall risk of ovarian cancer, and new research presented at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting found that this protection extended to the most fatal forms of the disease.

Using pooled data from 20 case-control studies, and after adjusting for various factors, use of any oral contraceptive was associated with a 46% reduction in the likelihood of death within 1 year of an ovarian cancer diagnosis, Jennifer Mongiovi, MS, a PhD student at the University at Buffalo, reported here.

The study, led by researchers from , examined nearly 2,000 ovarian cancer patients who died within 12 or 18 months from the time of their diagnosis, finding that risk of death within 1 year of a diagnosis was reduced by 66% for patients who had used contraceptives for 10 years or more, and by 32% for every 5 years of use. In this exclusive MedPage Today video, Mongiovi discusses the group's findings.

The following is a transcript of her remarks:

Ovarian cancer itself is quite rare, but it is highly fatal. Most women are diagnosed at a late stage, III or IV, where the disease is already spread and there aren't a lot of opportunities for intervention.

The association between oral contraceptive use and the prevention of ovarian cancer is pretty well established. However, we specifically chose to look at ovarian cancer that resulted in a death within 12 months of diagnosis. We're considering that a highly fatal disease, meaning that the disease was far more aggressive than just a standard ovarian cancer diagnosis. In our findings, we saw that this association between oral contraceptive use and ovarian cancer was more strongly protective at this highly fatal type of disease compared to a general diagnosis, suggesting that use of oral contraceptives could be more beneficial to people who are at a higher risk.

For every 5 years of oral contraceptive use, the protective effects essentially increased. So with the longer duration of use you would see less risk of having this highly fatal ovarian cancer. Any use itself was protective by around 40% to 50%.

I would say that in the future it would be great if we could look among these women who are at high risk with oral contraceptive use, doing some sort of larger prospective study design to really confirm that this is what we're seeing and hopefully offer these women a little bit of help and hope.

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