• Posted May 9, 2025

Ovary Removal Reduces Death, Cancer Risk Among Genetically Prone Breast Cancer Survivors

FRIDAY, May 9, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Removal of the ovaries and fallopian tubes appears to dramatically reduce the risk of death among breast cancer survivors who are genetically prone to cancer, a new study says.

Breast cancer survivors carrying BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene variants had a 48% overall lower risk of death after undergoing the surgery, which is known as bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy (BSO), researchers reported May 7 in The Lancet Oncology.

The survivors were also less likely to have another bout with cancer, researchers found.

What’s more, these women were not more likely to suffer other long-term health problems associated with the removal of their ovaries, such as heart disease, stroke and depression, results show.

There had been concerns that removal of the ovaries could cause unintended health consequences for women, since they enter early menopause after having the body’s main source of estrogen taken away, researchers said.

“We know that removing the ovaries and fallopian tubes dramatically reduces the risk of ovarian cancer, but there’s been a question mark over the potential unintended consequences that might arise from the sudden onset of menopause that this causes,” lead researcher Hend Hassan, a doctoral student at the University of Cambridge Center for Cancer Genetic Epidemiology, said in a news release.

“Reassuringly, our research has shown that for women with a personal history of breast cancer, this procedure brings clear benefits in terms of survival and a lower risk of other cancers without the adverse side effects such as heart conditions or depression,” she said.

For the study, researchers identified more than 3,400 British cancer survivors who carried variants of the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene known to cause cancer.

Of the women, around 850 of the BRCA1 carriers and 1,000 of the BRCA2 carriers had undergone surgery to remove their ovaries and fallopian tubes, researchers said.

Analysis revealed that over an average follow-up of nearly six years, women who underwent the surgery were about half as likely to die from cancer or any other cause.

BRCA2 carriers benefitted more, with a 56% reduction in their risk of death compared to a 38% reduction for BRCA1 carriers, results show.

The surgery also made women 40% less likely to develop a second cancer, researchers found.

“Our findings will be crucial for counseling women with cancer linked to one of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 variants, allowing them to make informed decisions about whether or not to opt for this operation,” senior researcher Antonis Antoniou of the University of Cambridge’s Department of Public Health and Primary Care said in a news release.

The study can’t draw a direct cause-and-effect link between the surgery and death or cancer risk, but researchers argue that the evidence points strongly towards this conclusion.

“Given the clear benefits that this procedure provides for at-risk women, it’s concerning that some groups of women are less likely to undergo it,” Hassan said. “We need to understand why this is and encourage uptake among these women.”

More information

The National Cancer Institute has more on BRCA genes and cancer.

SOURCE: University of Cambridge, news release, May 7, 2025