But after six months of almost nightly wake-ups \u2013 and at Mat\u2019s insistence \u2013 Claire went to see her GP.<\/p>\n
In the weeks that followed, her life was turned upside down as doctors discovered what was causing her headaches \u2013 and why they only struck at night.<\/p>\n
An MRI scan revealed she had a meningioma, the most common type of brain tumour that affects roughly 2,000 people a year in the UK.<\/p>\n
Meningiomas form in the meninges \u2013 the outer layers of tissues that cover the brain. They cause night-time headaches because, depending on where the tumour is located, lying down puts more pressure on the brain.<\/p>\n
Although generally slow-growing and not normally cancerous (so it won\u2019t spread elsewhere in the body), without treatment to cut it out a meningioma can squash the brain to the extent it causes vision loss, personality changes, memory loss and even permanent paralysis.<\/p>\n
![\"Claire](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/99413105-14816291-image-m-13_1750066505488.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Claire Love woke up with headaches almost every night for six months before she was diagnosed with\u00a0meningioma<\/p>\n
What\u2019s more, although survival rates are relatively high (70 per cent of patients are alive after ten years), between 10 and 20 per cent die within five years, as the tumours can trigger a catastrophic bleed in the brain, or a build-up of pressure that damages it beyond repair.<\/p>\n
And in rare cases, a meningioma can become cancerous.<\/p>\n
\u2018I remember swearing out loud when the consultant said the word \u201ctumour\u201d,\u2019 says Claire. \u2018I\u2019d gone to the appointment for the scan results on my own as I was so certain nothing was seriously wrong.<\/p>\n
\u2018I was only 35. The doctor said it was highly unusual for someone my age to have this condition.\u2019 (Most people with meningiomas are in their 60s \u2013 the risk increases with age.)<\/p>\n
No explanation was offered after her diagnosis in 2019. However, six years on, Claire believes she knows what may have caused it in her case \u2013 the contraceptive jab, which she took for over a decade before starting her family in 2013.<\/p>\n
Last year, a paper published in the BMJ reported that women who used the same popular type of contraceptive jab Claire was on \u2013 called Depo-Provera \u2013 for more than a year were five times more likely to develop a meningioma than women who don\u2019t use it. Claire read about the link through an online support group.<\/p>\n
The jab, also known as medroxyprogesterone acetate (a synthetic form of the hormone progesterone), is given into the arm or buttocks by a doctor every three months and works by preventing eggs from being released.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been available on the NHS for more than 40 years \u2013 in England alone GPs issue roughly 10,000 prescriptions a month for it. The main advantage is it means women don\u2019t have to remember to take a contraceptive pill at the same time every day.<\/p>\n
The BMJ study, by the French National Agency for Medicines and Health Products Safety, analysed data on more than 18,000 women in France who underwent surgery for meningioma between 2009 and 2018. The numbers developing meningioma while using the jab were significantly higher than in women not on it.<\/p>\n
\u2018Normally, out of every 1,000 women aged 30, you would expect to see four cases of meningioma by the time they reach 80,\u2019 says Dr Simon Newman, chief scientific officer at the Brain Tumour Charity.<\/p>\n
\u2018With Depo-Provera, that increases to 20 cases per 1,000 women \u2013 so even though it\u2019s still small, the risk is greater.\u2019<\/p>\n
After the study came out, the UK drug safety watchdog \u2013 the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) \u2013 called on the jab\u2019s manufacturer, Pfizer, to include a warning about the risk in patient information leaflets.<\/p>\n
Pfizer also wrote to NHS doctors last autumn urging them to immediately stop women from using Depo-Provera if they were diagnosed with a meningioma.<\/p>\n
Exactly how and why it triggers tumour growth is not clear, but it\u2019s thought to be due to exposure to synthetic forms of progesterone (progestogens) \u2013 around 70 per cent of meningioma cells have progesterone receptors on them, which means the synthetic hormones may be more likely to bind to them and make them grow.<\/p>\n
![\"Scans](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/99413121-14816291-image-a-14_1750066528717.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Scans showing a normal brain, left, and a meningioma tumour. Between 10 and 20 per cent of meningioma patients die within five years, as the tumours can trigger a catastrophic bleed in the brain, or a build-up of pressure that damages it<\/p>\n
More recent work by the same French researchers also found a heightened risk with some \u2013 but not all \u2013 types of oral contraceptives that contain progestogens.<\/p>\n
Their data, published in the BMJ last week, found women who took forms of the Pill made with levonorgestrel (a type of progestogen) for five years or more were 50 per cent more at risk of meningioma, though the numbers affected are still small.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, although it\u2019s not clear how many women in the UK may have developed a tumour after using the jab, Claire\u2019s case is far from an isolated one.<\/p>\n
In May, the Mail reported that lawyers in the US are pursuing a class action against Pfizer on behalf of 400 women who blame the injection for their tumours \u2013 and since that news broke, dozens of British women responded with their own stories, fearing the same has happened to them.<\/p>\n
One said: \u2018I\u2019ve been on this for eight years and was never informed of the risk. I\u2019ve had terrible headaches for months and just found out I have three meningioma tumours.\u2019<\/p>\n
Another woman from London, who had a golf-ball sized growth removed from her brain, said: \u2018If I knew the risks I would never have taken this. I don\u2019t blame the NHS \u2013 it\u2019s the companies that make them that don\u2019t give accurate information. If we are told these are possible side-effects then we have a choice to take it or not \u2013 but we never had that option.\u2019<\/p>\n
One law firm, which asked not to be identified, said at least 200 women in the UK had been in touch over the last 12 months.<\/p>\n
Separately, Chaya Hanoomanjee, managing director at London law firm Austen Hays \u2013 which specialises in class actions \u2013 said it is also investigating the grounds for a possible UK case against Pfizer.<\/p>\n
\u2018We\u2019re trying to identify people who have been impacted,\u2019 she told Good Health. \u2018The big question is whether the manufacturer was aware of the risks before the BMJ paper in March 2024, but failed to alert women who were on the jab.\u2019<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/99413119-14816291-image-a-15_1750066537795.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
The Depo-Provera contraceptive jab has been available on the NHS for more than 40 years \u2013 in England alone GPs issue roughly 10,000 prescriptions a month for it<\/p>\n
Pfizer UK declined to comment to Good Health on whether it knew about the increased risk of meningioma before the BMJ paper was published.<\/p>\n
Dr Newman says there is other evidence that meningioma growth can be fuelled by natural hormonal fluctuations \u2013 particularly spikes in progesterone seen when a woman is expecting a child.<\/p>\n
\u2018Pregnancy does appear to increase the rate of growth of meningioma cells,\u2019 he says. \u2018And that means women do seem to be twice as likely to get it as men.\u2019<\/p>\n
Claire\u2019s diagnosis was only the beginning of her ordeal.<\/p>\n
Within days she was undergoing a 15-hour operation, during which surgeons removed her entire forehead to access the tumour. Afterwards, she developed an abscess inside her skull.<\/p>\n
\u2018My head filled with pus inside the wound and started to swell from the inside out,\u2019 she recalls. \u2018I had to have more surgery to wash the wound out.\u2019<\/p>\n
But the infection was destroying the bone in her skull. To give it a better chance of clearing by letting more air circulate in the cavity, Claire lived for ten months with no forehead bone \u2013 just a layer of skin covering where it should be. Nurses visited her at home daily to inject antibiotics to clear up the infection.<\/p>\n
\u2018I looked like an alien,\u2019 she recalls. \u2018I had to wear a special helmet if I left the house, to protect against any damage.\u2019<\/p>\n
A third operation followed to replace her forehead with a permanent metal plate. But even that wasn\u2019t the end of it.<\/p>\n
\u2018Two years later, in 2021, I had a seizure in my sleep,\u2019 she says. \u2018I was rushed to hospital, where doctors put me into an induced coma for three days as the seizures would not stop.\u2019<\/p>\n
She was subsequently diagnosed with epilepsy \u2013 a direct result of the tumour\u2019s damage to the brain \u2013 and will be on anti-seizure medication for life. She is also having counselling for post-traumatic stress disorder.<\/p>\n
Claire says she is undecided about pursuing legal action, as she \u2018can\u2019t say for certain that Depo-Provera caused my meningioma\u2019. Her focus is instead on alerting other women to the dangers.<\/p>\n
\u2018The tumour has ruined my life – I\u2019m a shadow of my former self.<\/p>\n
\u2018I\u2019m due another scan in December and I\u2019m already starting to have anxiety about whether the tumour could have returned. I\u2019m only young, but I\u2019m worried about my future and my children all the time.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a working mum Claire Love presumed she was waking up with headaches at night because her life…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189606,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[92,105,211,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-189605","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-dailymail","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-nhs","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114694403450895373","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}