Use of cosmetic talc on contraceptive diaphragms and risk of ovarian cancer: A meta-analysis of nine observational studies

Prior work suggests an association between perineal use of cosmetic talc and increased ovarian cancer risk. A meta-analysis was performed to examine this hypothesis by evaluating ovarian cancer risk associated with direct exposure of the female genital tract to talc via dusting of contraceptive diaphragms. Data were pooled from epidemiological studies using a general variance-based meta-analytic method that employs confidence intervals. The outcome of interest was a summary relative risk reflecting the risk of ovarian cancer development associated with the use of cosmetic talc on contraceptive diaphragms. Sensitivity analyses were performed to explain any observed statistical heterogeneity and to explore the influence of specific study characteristics on the summary estimate of effect. Initially, combining homogeneous data from nine case-control studies yielded a non-statistically significant summary relative risk of 1.03 (0.80-1.37), suggesting no association between talc-dusted diaphragms and ovarian cancer development. Sensitivity analyses were performed to evaluate the robustness of this finding. All resultant summary relative risks were not statistically significant. The available epidemiological data do not support a causal association between the use of cosmetic talc-dusted diaphragms and ovarian cancer development.