Another Scare About Contraceptive Safety?

As hormonal contraception is used by many women in developed countries, considerable attention has been paid to its safety. To examine whether use of hormonal contraception during pregnancy or within 3 months before conception is associated with excess risk for childhood leukemia in the offspring (including lymphoid or nonlymphoid [i.e., myeloid or other] leukemia), researchers linked 18 years of data (1996 through 2014) from the Danish Medical Birth Registry as well as the Prescription and Cancer Registries.

Nonlymphoid leukemia, although rare overall, was more common among children born to women who became pregnant while using hormonal contraception than those whose mothers never used hormonal contraception: In unadjusted analyses, recent …