Former Beverly Hills 90210 star Shannen Doherty has been through a lot of health scares in her life, and she believes it all stems from one decision she made early on. During a recent episode of her Let's Be Clear podcast, Shannen said she believes that undergoing IVF contributed to her eventual breast cancer diagnosis. And it's not just her — she says she knows multiple people who this may have happened to who could further prove a link between the two.
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Shannen explained that she went through IVF treatments before her breast cancer diagnosis.
While she was still married to Kurt Iswarienko, the couple wanted to have a child, but IVF was necessary because they were older at the time.
"Not only did I want a child for myself, but I wanted it for my husband. I wanted it for our marriage, I wanted him to have that part of himself fulfilled as well," she said.
When she was diagnosed in 2015, Shannen believed it was because she'd had IVF.
Although ultimately her IVF treatments did not result in a baby, Shannen believes that they did contribute to her health issues — and the ones that others in her life have experienced.
"A lot of other women that I knew that did IVF that ended up getting breast cancer as well," she said on the podcast.
She thinks the hormones in the treatment might have played a role.
"If you sort of have a cell that's a little wonky and that's sitting on the edge of maybe turning, spreading cancer … all the hormones that you're pumping into your body from IVF are only going to up that chance. That was at least my thinking," she said on the podcast.
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IVF has not been found to cause cancer.
According to what Dr. Kandice K. Ludwig told Health Central in 2023, researchers have discovered that those who undergo IVF are not at a higher risk of developing breast cancer, including those who have had six or more rounds of treatments.
Instead, the real reason it appears there's a link between IVF and breast cancer is because those who deal with infertility may also be more likely to develop breast cancer later in life and women who go through IVF also tend to be older; the risk of breast cancer goes up as we age.
Shannen continues to battle cancer.
Shannen had been in remission until recent years, and in 2020, she shared that not only had her cancer come back but that it also had progressed to stage 4. Last year, she revealed that her cancer has spread to her brain, and since then, she's been undergoing treatments to manage it, including surgery to remove her tumor along with radiation.
