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If fertility drugs actually help a women get pregnant or not, determines the risk at which they are, of contracting breast cancer, claims a latest research.

There have been various studies trying to establish the effects of fertility drugs on women. Of particular concern, has been the possible impact of the hormones stimulated by the drugs on the possibility of a woman getting breast cancer. The results of the studies have been found to be widely varying.

A latest research at the National Institutes of Health has found that although the drugs seem to reduce breast cancer risk in young women, the risk goes up when they get pregnant, reports ABC news.

The research results found that women who did not get pregnant in spite of taking the drugs, were at a lower risk of developing breast cancer before age 50. Women who were on the drugs and reported a pregnancy lasting 10 weeks were found to be at a slightly higher risk.

According to one of the study authors, Clarice Weinberg, who is the head of biostatistics at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, a stimulated pregnancy may negate the effect of the drug it plays in reducing breast cancer. But she adds that women should not stop taking fertility drugs for the fear of contracting breast cancer.

"I don't see the results as any cause for alarm. But everyone needs to manage their risk and be careful," she was quoted as saying by ABC News.

Dr. Marcelle Cedars, a professor of reproductive endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco, says that the study results are in fact encouraging to women who want to take fertility drugs.

"Even in the group at an increased risk after their pregnancy, their risk was not higher than the general public," said Cedars, who was not involved in the study. "If you use fertility drugs, you're not increasing your risk."

The possible explanation of the phenomenon is that, ovulation-stimulating drugs, which drive a woman's ovaries into producing more eggs that could be fertilized, also increase the levels of estrogen in a woman's body. Estrogen has been linked to increasing the risk of breast cancer in women.

When a woman consumes ovulation-stimulation drugs but still there is still no pregnancy, the hormone levels fall back, decreasing the risk of cancer.

Women who do get pregnant after the consumptions of the drugs, the production of estrogen in them continues, hence increasing the risk of cancer.

Weinberg and her colleagues suggest that the increased levels of hormone effect breast tissues which naturally change when a woman's body gets into pregnancy. Also, they said, future studies on fertility drugs and breast cancer should consider the role of pregnancy in affecting younger women's risk for developing the disease.

The study was published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.