Susan Evans
Gynaecologist with expertise in pelvic pain and associate professor at the University of Adelaide (Australia)
Progestogen medications are medications that mimic progesterone in the body. Each progestogen has its own characteristics. This is important information to guide health practitioners when prescribing hormonal therapies. Importantly, the use of intrauterine devices, including Mirena, were not found to increase meningioma risk.
This information will further speed the changing preference from oral hormonal medications to intrauterine devices.
The Kaiser Family Foundation in the United States found that IUD use increased from 2% - 14% of contraceptive use, while oral contraceptive use fell from 31% to 22% over the time period 1995-2017. This data will further speed this change.
The authors of the paper have reported on an epidemiological study of 108,000 women. This included 18,000 women with intracranial meningioma.
It is therefore a large sample size, well able to consider outcomes of low frequency. They have not put forward a reason for their findings.
We know that different progestogen medications react differently at multiple hormonal receptors in the body. We also know that some progestogens, including medroxyprogesterone acetate and cyproterone acetate disrupt the androgen receptor.
This study should be a prompt for research considering different progestogens and their interaction with a full range of hormonal and endocrine receptors including androgen receptors.