Cohort Study Of Cancer Incidence And Mortality Amongst Women Treated For Subfertility

Data-sharing agreement from NHS England Data Uses Register. Evidence status: source reported.

Organisation: UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Published: 2026-10-01
Source reference: DARS-NIC-147910-HHGGZ-v4.2
Jurisdiction: England
Licence: Open Government Licence v3.0, subject to NHS England terms and exclusions

Register reference: DARS-NIC-147910-HHGGZ-v4.2
Applicant type: Academic
Data controllers: UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Agreement period: 2026-10-01 to 2027-10-31
For commercial purposes (as marked in the register): No
Release files listed by NHS England: 0

Data approved

Cancer Registration Data
Civil Registrations of Death
Demographics

Objective, as published

The University of Oxford requires access to NHS England data for the purpose of the following research project: Cancer Incidence and Mortality in Women Treated for Subfertility. The following is a summary of the aims of the research project provided by University of Oxford: Subfertility, defined as a reduced level of fertility characterized by unusually long time to conception, affects a significant proportion of women globally. In the UK, many women sought medical assistance for subfertility during the 1970s and 1980s, a period before the widespread use of modern Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) like In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF). Treatments during this era included hormonal therapies and surgical interventions, some of which are still in use today. However, long-term data on the health outcomes of women who underwent these treatments have been limited, especially regarding risks of cancer and overall mortality. The following are the aims of the research project: - Assess long-term cancer and mortality risks in women treated for subfertility between 1970 and 1990 in Oxfordshire and West Berkshire. - Determine whether reproductive history and fertility treatments used in the pre-ART era influenced cancer and mortality outcomes. - Evaluate the safety and long-term effects of drug regimes used to stimulate egg production, many of which are still in use today. - Compare cancer/mortality experiences across subgroups defined by different causes of subfertility and treatmen…

Expected benefits, as published

The findings of this research study are expected to contribute to evidence-based decision-making for policy-makers, local decision-makers such as doctors, and patients to inform best practice to improve the care, treatment and experience of health care users relevant to the subject matter of the study. The use of the data could: • help the system to better understand the health and care needs of populations. • lead to the identification or improvement of treatments or interventions, or health and care system design to improve health and care outcomes or experience. • support knowledge creation or exploratory research (and the innovations and developments that might result from that exploratory work). University of Oxford anticipate that analysis of the cohort data will add to existing kno…

Benefits reported by the applicant

Building on earlier work involving the extraction of clinical infertility (treatment) and maternity information about the women and the babies they delivered in the 1970s and 1980s, the study has continued the process of further cleaning this information regarding exposures around the time of conception. The study has drafted a first paper about infertility (treatment) and its impact on the characteristics of babies born in Britain over the last 50 years, prompted by initial intriguing findings about twins in this local cohort, published 20 years ago. The paper has yet to be submitted for publication. However, building on these general findings, the study has moved to investigating the effects of infertility (treatment) recorded in our cohort on the same baby outcomes in the 1970-1990 per…

This is the applicant's own account; OpenHDI has not verified it.

Source: https://digital.nhs.uk/services/data-access-request-service-dars/data-uses-register. Captured 2026-11-05.

Limitations: Data-sharing agreement as published in NHS England's Data Uses Register. An agreement permits access; actual data releases are listed separately. Expected and yielded benefits are as reported by the applicant and have not been independently verified. Long text fields can be cut off in NHS England's spreadsheet export at Excel's 32,767-character cell limit.