A study by researchers at the University of Uppsala in Sweden has found that women who used birth control pills had a 32 percent reduced risk for endometrial cancer and a 28 percent reduced risk for ovarian cancer. The study, published in December in Cancer Research, also found that the protective effects lasted for decades after women stopped taking oral contraceptives.

“The findings of the study, that use of oral contraceptives is protective of endometrial and ovarian cancer, is in line with previously published data,” Marina Stasenko, MD, an assistant professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and a member of NYU Langone Health’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, tells Verywell Health. “However, the additional information that the risk reduction lasts 35 years after discontinuation is novel and rather exciting.”

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