![\"Pancreatic](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/8eb1f97c0a6476f5f401df87b3728245.jpg\"\/)
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Pancreatic cancer illustration. It has been confirmed that women with childbirth experience have a relatively lower risk of developing pancreatic cancer. Provided by Getty Image Bank<\/p>\n
Women who have given birth have a 30% lower risk of developing pancreatic cancer than women who have never given birth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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On the 8th, Korea University Ansan Hospital announced that a research team led by Professor Park Joo-hyun of the Department of Family Medicine at Korea University Ansan Hospital and Professor Hong Jeong-yong of the Division of Hematology and Oncology at Samsung Medical Center analyzed the association between childbirth experience and pancreatic cancer risk in approximately 930,000 premenopausal Korean women and published their findings in the international journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Based on data from 2019 to 2023, pancreatic cancer has a 5-year relative survival rate of 17%, the lowest among major cancers and a representative intractable cancer. In the early stages, it causes almost no specific symptoms, making early detection difficult, and by the time it is diagnosed, the disease is often already advanced, leading to a poor prognosis.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Across all age groups, pancreatic cancer is more common in men, but among younger age groups, the number of female patients is rising markedly.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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According to cancer registration statistics from the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the number of newly diagnosed pancreatic cancer patients in Korea increased from 2,614 in 1999 to 9,748 in 2023, about a 3.7-fold rise, putting the country on the verge of an era with 10,000 new patients per year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Major risk factors for pancreatic cancer include smoking, obesity, and diabetes. However, there is still insufficient evidence on how female reproductive factors affect the development of pancreatic cancer.<\/p>\n
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The research team followed 935,345 premenopausal women aged 40 to 55 who underwent the national cancer screening program in 2009 for an average of 9.3 years. During the follow-up period, 2,065 women were diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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The incidence of pancreatic cancer was higher in women who had never given birth than in women with childbirth experience. This association remained even after adjusting for various factors that can influence pancreatic cancer risk, including age, body mass index (BMI), smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity, diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, and pancreatitis.<\/p>\n
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Among women who had given birth to one child, the risk of pancreatic cancer was 28% lower than in nulliparous women, and among those who had given birth to two or more children, the risk was 30% lower. Age at menarche, duration of breastfeeding, and duration of oral contraceptive use did not show a significant association with pancreatic cancer risk.<\/p>\n
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The research team suggested that the difference in pancreatic cancer risk may be related to the increase in the female hormone estrogen during pregnancy, but explained that further studies are needed to clarify the exact biological mechanisms.<\/p>\n
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Professor Park said, \u201cThis study will serve as important evidence for understanding the risk of pancreatic cancer in women without childbirth experience in this era of low birth rates and for developing tailored cancer prevention strategies for them,\u201d adding, \u201cHowever, since this is an observational study that identified an association between childbirth experience and pancreatic cancer risk, it is still too early to interpret childbirth as directly preventing pancreatic cancer.\u201d<\/p>\n
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![\"Provided](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/07205f319b35fca1d3815ade1692941b.jpg\"\/)
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Provided by Korea University Ansan Hospital<\/p>\n
Copyright \u24d2 DongA Science. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pancreatic cancer illustration. It has been confirmed that women with childbirth experience have a relatively lower risk of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":112681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[26767,57899,57900,171,57901,57895,57896,57897,57898],"class_list":["post-112680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-korea","tag-childbirth","tag-estrogen","tag-female-hormone","tag-korean","tag-pancreatic-cancer","tag-57895","tag-57896","tag-57897","tag-57898"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}