Tag: race/ethnicity

Categories : Cancer GeneticsTags :

Prostate Cancer Blood Test Equally Effective Across Ethnic Groups

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Photo by Nicholas Swatz

The Stockholm3 blood test, developed by researchers at Karolinska Institutet, is equally effective at detecting prostate cancer in different ethnic groups, according to a new paper published in The Journal of Clinical Oncology. The test produces significantly better results than the current PSA standard.

Stockholm3, a prostate cancer test developed in Sweden, runs a combination of protein and genetic markers from a blood sample through an algorithm to find the probability of a patient having clinically significant cancer. 

Studies in more than 90 000 men have shown that Stockholm3 produces significantly better results than the current PSA standard. The test improves prostate cancer diagnosis by reducing unnecessary MRI and biopsies and by identifying significant cancers in men with low or normal PSA values.   

Ethnically diverse group

However, previous studies have been conducted primarily in Scandinavia on a mainly White population with uncertain generalisability to the rest of the world. A Swedish-American research group has now examined how well it works in an ethnically mixed group of men in the USA and Canada. 

The study included over 2000 men at 17 different clinics, 16% of whom were Asian, 24% African-American, 14% Latin American and 46% White American.  All participants had a referral for a prostate biopsy on the basis of an elevated PSA score, abnormal rectal examination, MRI scan or other suspicious clinical finding.  

Before the biopsy was performed, a blood test was taken along with clinical data pertinent to the Stockholm3 test, which was conducted blinded to the biopsy results. 

Halving the number of unnecessary biopsies

The analysis shows that clinically relevant prostate cancer cases were found in a total of 29% of the men, somewhat more in African Americans and slightly fewer in Asians. 

It also shows that the Stockholm3 test could almost halve the number of unnecessary biopsies (45 per cent fewer: 673 as opposed to 1226) while being no less effective at detecting all clinically relevant cases. The results were similar across the different ethnic groups. 

“The study demonstrates that the Stockholm3 test is just as effective on an ethnically mixed group as it is on a White, Swedish population,” says the study’s lead author Hari T. Vigneswaran, doctor and PhD student at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet. 

According to him, the research answers several important questions and will lead to a more widespread use of the method: 

“Colleagues in other countries are very interested in these data, which show that Stockholm3 works for a non-Swedish population and among minorities.” 

Source: Karolinska Institutet

Categories : Medical Research & TechnologyTags :

Systematic Biases on Race and Gender at Play in Clinical Trials

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Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Randomized controlled trials, or RCTs, are believed to be the best way to study the safety and efficacy of new treatments in clinical research. However, a recent study from Michigan State University found that people of colour and white women are significantly underrepresented in RCTs due to systematic biases. 

The study, published in the Journal of Ethnicity in Substance Abuse, reviewed 18 RCTs conducted over the last 15 years that tested treatments for post-traumatic stress and alcohol use disorder. The researchers found that despite women having double the rates of post-traumatic stress and alcohol use disorder than men, and people of colour having worse chronicity than white people, most participants were white (59.5%) and male (about 78%). 

“Because RCTs are the gold standard for treatment studies and drug trials, we rarely ask the important questions about their limitations and failings,” said Nicole Buchanan, co-author of the study and professor in MSU’s Department of Psychology. “For RCTs to meet their full potential, investigators need to fix barriers to inclusion. Increasing representation in RCTs is not simply an issue for equity, but it is also essential to enhancing the quality of our science and meeting the needs of the public that funds these studies through their hard-earned tax dollars.”

The researchers found that the design and implementation of the randomised controlled trials contributed to the lack of representation of people of colour and women. This happened because trials were conducted in areas where white men were the majority demographic group and study samples almost always reflected the demographic makeup where studies occurred. Additionally, those designing the studies seldom acknowledged race or gender differences, meaning they did not intentionally recruit diverse samples.

Furthermore, the journals publishing these studies did not have regulations requiring sample diversity, equity or inclusion as appropriate to the conditions under investigation.

“Marginalized groups have unique experiences from privileged groups, and when marginalised groups are poorly included in research, we remain in the dark about their experiences, insights, needs and strengths,” said Mallet Reid, co-author of the study and doctoral candidate in MSU’s Department of Psychology. “This means that clinicians and researchers may unknowingly remain ignorant to how to attend to the trauma and addiction challenges facing marginalised groups and may unwittingly perpetuate microaggressions against marginalised groups in clinical settings or fail to meet their needs.”

Source: Michigan State University

Categories : Obstetrics & GynaecologyTags :

First Menstrual Periods are Arriving Earlier for Younger Generations

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Photo by Marta Branco

The average age at menarche, the first menstrual period, has been decreasing among younger generations in the US, especially those belonging to racial minorities and lower socioeconomic statuses, according to a new study led by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. It also found that the average time it takes for the menstrual cycle to become regular is increasing.

The study, published in JAMA Network Open, is the latest publication from the Apple Women’s Health Study, a longitudinal study of menstrual cycles, gynaecological conditions, and overall women’s health conducted by Harvard Chan School, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and Apple.

“Our findings can lead to a better understanding of menstrual health across the lifespan and how our lived environment impacts this critical vital sign,” said co-principal investigator Shruthi Mahalingaiah, assistant professor of environmental, reproductive, and women’s health at Harvard Chan School.

While previous studies have shown trends towards earlier menarche over the past five decades, data has been limited on how these trends present within different racial groups and socioeconomic statuses. Additionally, few studies have had sufficient data to identify any trends regarding time to menstrual cycle regularity.

The researchers used the Apple Women’s Health Study’s large, diverse dataset to fill this research gap. The 71 341 participants who enrolled between November 2018 and March 2023 self-reported the age at which they first began menstruating and their race and socioeconomic status. The researchers divided the participants into five age brackets: born between 1950–1969, 1970–1979, 1980–1989, 1990–1999, and 2000-2005. Ages of menarche were defined as early (younger than 11 years old), very early (younger than 9), and late (ages 16 and above). A subset of participants (61 932) self-reported the time it took for their menstrual cycle to become regular and were divided into five categories: up to two years, between three and four years, longer than five years, hasn’t become regular, or became regular with use of hormones. Another subset (9865) provided their body mass index (BMI) at their age of menarche.

The study found that as birth year increased (meaning younger participants), average age at menarche decreased and time from menarche to menstrual cycle regularity increased. Among participants born from 1950–1969, the average age at menarche was 12.5 years, and the rates of early and very early menarche were 8.6% and 0.6%, respectively. Among participants born from 2000–2005, the average age of menarche was 11.9 years, and the rates of early and very early menarche were 15.5% and 1.4%, respectively. Across the two groups, the percentage of participants who reached menstrual cycle regularity within two years of menarche decreased from 76% to 56%. The researchers observed that these trends were present among all sociodemographic groups but were most pronounced among the participants who identified as Black, Hispanic, Asian, or mixed race, and who rated themselves as belonging to a low socioeconomic status.

The findings showed that BMI at age of menarche could explain part of the trend toward periods starting earlier. Other possible factors that might explain the trend include dietary patterns, psychological stress and adverse childhood experiences, and environmental factors such as endocrine-disrupting chemicals and air pollution.

“Continuing to investigate early menarche and its drivers is critical,” said corresponding author Zifan Wang, postdoctoral research fellow in Harvard Chan School’s Department of Environmental Health. “Early menarche is associated with higher risk of adverse health outcomes, such as cardiovascular disease and cancer. To address these health concerns – which our findings suggest may begin to impact more people, with disproportionate impact on already disadvantaged populations – we need much more investment in menstrual health research.”

The authors noted some limitations to the study, including that it relies heavily on retrospective self-reporting.

Source: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Categories : Cancer DermatologyTags :

Among Black Men, Study Finds Increased Mortality from Melanoma Diagnoses

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Photo by Nsey Benajah on Unsplash

Melanoma is often detected later in people with darker skin complexions – and the consequences can be devastating, according to the results of a Mayo Clinic study published in the Journal of Surgical Oncology.

While melanoma may be found less frequently in people with darker complexions than fair ones, this aggressive form of skin cancer, accounting for 75% of all skin-cancer-related deaths, can strike anyone. The study, which consisted of 492 597 patients with melanoma, suggests that added vigilance in early screening is particularly needed for Black men, whose cancers are often found at later stages, leading to worse outcomes compared to white patients or Black women.

“We compared non-Hispanic Black patients to white patients and saw striking differences in how patients presented with the disease,” says surgical oncologist Tina Hieken, MD, senior author of the study and a researcher at Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center. “We saw more extremity melanoma, and more later-stage disease.”

Extremity melanoma refers to skin cancer that can develop on the arms, legs, hands and feet. Various factors, including social risk factors and biological components, could be at play, but further research is needed to help determine why these differences exist.

Revealing differences in sex-based immune response

The research found that Black female patients with melanoma fared better than Black male patients. Men tended to be older at diagnosis and more likely to have cancer that had spread to their lymph nodes compared to women. This translated to worse survival rates: the five-year survival for Black men with stage 3 melanoma was only 42% chance, compared to 71% for Black women.

Most research on melanoma hasn’t focused on how race and sex affect outcomes and hasn’t looked at the influence of race and ethnicity across all groups. Dr Hieken says the study highlights the need to understand these differences better, noting that this is the first large study to confirm that sex-based differences in melanoma outcomes exist within the non-Hispanic Black population.

“When we talk about later-stage melanoma patients who are female versus male in that non-Hispanic Black patient cohort who ended up doing worse, some biological things may be going on here that are interesting,” says Dr Hieken.

One theory centres on variations in immune response.

“Several immune signals suggest that women may respond better to some immunotherapies than males,” says Dr Hieken.

Researchers note that more studies focused on melanoma in a broader range of people, including more Black participants in clinical trials, is key to bridging this knowledge gap and potentially identifying more effective treatments.

Healthcare professionals should screen carefully

Dr Hieken notes that this study is a wake-up call for everyone battling to diagnose and cure melanoma, regardless of the patient’s sex or skin tone.

She emphasises that healthcare professionals should carefully examine areas like palms, soles and under fingernails, where melanoma might be more challenging to spot on darker skin.

“We can incorporate screening for skin lesions or lesions under the nails into the visit for patients as part of their regular checkups,” says Dr Hieken. “What we want to do is elevate care for our patients.”

Source: Mayo Clinic

Categories : AgeingTags :

Black Adults Experience Less Cognitive Decline after Retirement

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Photo by Barbara Olsen on Pexels

A study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society found that immediately after retirement, white adults tended to experience a significant decline in cognitive function, whereas Black adults experienced minimal cognitive decline. White men showed the steepest post-retirement cognitive decline across sex/race combinations, whereas Black women showed the least decline.

White women performed better cognitively at retirement than other race/sex subgroups, and after retirement, their cognitive functioning declined at a rate that was slightly less than the average for this study. Results were adjusted for sociodemographics and physical and mental health indicators.

The study, which included 2226 US participants followed for up to 10 years, revealed greater post-retirement cognitive decline among individuals who attended college compared with those who did not.

“The results seem to point to the possibility that better job opportunities could lead to greater cognitive losses after retirement whereas exposure to lifelong structural inequalities may actually ease transition to retirement with respect to cognitive aging,” said lead author Ross Andel, PhD, of Arizona State University’s Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation.

Source: Wiley

Categories : GeneticsTags :

Genetic Variations Influence Drug Metabolism in Patients of African Descent

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Photo by Agung Pandit Wiguna

Investigators have identified new genetic variations that affect gene expression in the liver cells of patients of African ancestry, findings that provide insight into how drugs are metabolised differently in different populations, according to a study published in The American Journal of Human Genetics.

Expression quantitative locus (eQTL) studies use an individual’s genomic and transcriptomic data to uncover unique genetic variants that regulate gene expression. However, people of African descent have not been well represented in these databases.

Having this comprehensive, multiomic data is key to uncovering the mechanisms that regulate an individual’s genome and understanding how different groups of people respond to drugs differently, which can improve treatment strategies, according to Minoli Perera, PharmD, PhD, associate professor of Pharmacology and senior author of the study.

“We don’t have data from any historically excluded populations to run these analyses, so a big motivation of my lab is to create data in African ancestry populations so that they are represented in multiomics,” said Perera.

In the current study, the investigators treated hepatocytes from liver tissue samples from African American patients with six FDA approved drugs: Rifampin, Phenytoin, Carbamazepine, Dexamethasone, Phenobarbital and Omeprazole.

The investigators then performed whole-genome genotyping and RNA sequencing on primary hepatocytes treated both with and without the drugs. They also mapped eQTLs, or single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) affecting gene expression, in the liver cells.

From this comprehensive analysis, they uncovered varying transcriptional changes in the cell lines across the different drug treatments and identified NRF2 as a potential gene transcription regulator.

“NRF2 has been already identified as a very important transcription factor for drug metabolism, but this is a much more comprehensive way to look at it,” Perera said.

The investigators also discovered nearly 3000 genetic variants that affect how well hepatocytes respond to external stimuli, including drugs, which the investigators called drug response eQTLs, or reQTLs. Notably, they discovered reQTLs for drug-metabolising genes such as CYP3A5.

Most individuals of European ancestry carry a specific genetic variant in CYP3A5 which results in no/low CYP3A5 enzyme, whereas individuals of African ancestry carry that variant at a lower frequency. According to Perera, this is a problem because most participants that are recruited for clinical trials are of European ancestry, and the findings from these trials directly inform how often and how much of a drug should be prescribed to all patients, regardless of their ancestry.

“When you test drugs in a group of people with limited diversity, and then say this is the dose, this is how fast it’s metabolised, this is how often you dose the drug and then you give this medication to the entire U.S. population, we don’t know for sure how accurate those measures are, and that’s just with one variant. Other variants that may influence how much or how little we up-regulate these important enzymes,” Perera said.

Perera said her team is now expanding their work by increasing the number of hepatocytes from African American participants they’re studying and incorporating other types of omics techniques, such as epigenetic profiling.

“Almost exclusively we’ve done epigenetic screenings in European populations, so what can we find in the epigenome that’s important for African Americans. Also, because there’s more genetic variation in individuals of African descent, would that change the epigenome in ways that we aren’t able to see in Europeans,” Perera said. “We hope that what we’re doing can help annotate new studies coming along for African ancestry populations.”

Source: Northwestern University

Categories : Ageing Cardiovascular DiseaseTags :

Increasing Age Blunts the Strength of Certain Stroke Risk Factors

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Photo by CDC on Unsplash

Hypertension and diabetes are known risk factors for stroke, but now a new study shows that the amount of risk may decrease as people age. The study is published in Neurology.

“High blood pressure and diabetes are two important risk factors for stroke that can be managed by medication, decreasing a person’s risk,” said study author George Howard, DrPH, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health. “Our findings show that their association with stroke risk may be substantially less at older ages, yet other risk factors do not change with age. These differences in risk factors imply that determining whether a person is at high risk for stroke may differ depending on their age.”

The study involved 28 235 people who had never had a stroke and were followed for 11 years. Risk factors included hypertension, diabetes, smoking, atrial fibrillation, heart disease and left ventricular hypertrophy. Because of the well-known higher stroke risk in Black people (comprising 41% of participants), race was also considered as part of the assessed risk factors, Howard added.

Researchers followed up with participants every six months, confirming strokes by reviewing medical records.

During the study, there were 1405 strokes over 276 074 person-years. Participants were divided into three age groups. The age ranges for those groups varied slightly depending on the data being analysed by researchers. In general, the younger group included participants ages 45–69, the middle group included people in their late 60s to 70s and the older group included people 74 and older.

Researchers found that people with diabetes in the younger age group were approximately twice as likely to have a stroke as people of similar age who did not have diabetes, while people with diabetes in the older age group had an approximately 30% higher risk of having a stroke than people of similar older age who did not have diabetes.

Researchers also found that people with high blood pressure in the younger age group had an 80% higher risk of having stroke than people of similar age without high blood pressure while that risk went down to 50% for people with high blood pressure in the older age group compared to people of similar age without high blood pressure.

With race/ethnicity as a risk factor, Black participants in the younger age group compared to White participants in that group, a difference which decreased in the older age group. For stroke risk factors such as smoking, atrial fibrillation and left ventricular hypertrophy, researchers did not find an age-related change in risk.

“It is important to note that our results do not suggest that treatment of high blood pressure and diabetes becomes unimportant in older age,” said Howard. “Such treatments are still very important for a person’s health. But it also may be wise for doctors to focus on managing risk factors such as atrial fibrillation, smoking and left ventricular hypertrophy as people age.”

Howard also noted that even where the impact of risk factors decreases with age, the total number of people with strokes at older ages may still be larger since overall risk of stroke increases with age. For example, in the younger age group for hypertension, researchers estimate that about 2.0% of normotensive people had a stroke, compared to 3.6% of hypertensive people. In the older age group, about 6.2% of normotensive people had a stroke, compared to 9.3% of hypertensive people.

A limitation of the research was that participants’ risk factors were assessed only once at the start of the study, and it’s possible they may have changed over time.

Source: American Academy of Neurology 

Categories : Cancer Ethics and LawTags :

Towards Larger, More Representative Lung Cancer Clinical Trials

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Source: NCI

Filling clinical trials and enrolling sufficiently diverse, representative groups of patients, has long been a challenge, partly due to stringent participation guidelines. In an effort to attain larger and more diverse trial groups, an international team of researchers and policymakers has written new recommendations on how to determine eligibility criteria for lung cancer clinical trials.

The group was led in part by David Gerber, MD, along with representatives from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Cancer Institute, European Medicines Agency, pharmaceutical companies, and the LUNGevity Foundation.

The recommendations, published today in JAMA Oncology, offer the first publicly available outline of upcoming FDA draft guidance on lung cancer clinical trials that are expected to make it easier to include more patients.

“This paper is the public’s first look at the FDA’s proposed changes to how we determine who can participate in a lung cancer clinical trial,” said Professor Gerber in the Hematology/Oncology Division at UTSW. “If these changes are successful, they could make clinical trials for lung cancer as well as other cancers more powerful and more representative.”

Ensuring that people from diverse backgrounds join clinical trials is key to properly evaluating how a new treatment will work among patients of all races and ethnicities. But today, only about 5% of all cancer patients enrol in a clinical trial, and only 11% of cancer clinical trial participants identify as a racial or ethnic minority.

For patients with cancer, participation in clinical trials requires not just a decision to try an experimental treatment, but time and energy spent understanding the trial, enrolling in it, and often attending extra testing or clinic appointments. Many researchers agree that complicated, inconsistent, poorly explained, and overly strict eligibility requirements to join a cancer clinical trial exacerbate this problem and are a key reason for the low number of underrepresented minorities in clinical trials.

“So many clinical trials never finish enrollment, close prematurely, or don’t recruit a population that lets researchers generalise the results,” Dr. Gerber said. “I think there’s widespread recognition that eligibility criteria have become too stringent.”

Addressing this for one cancer subtype, advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), – the LUNGevity Foundation convened a roundtable discussion with experts from academia, industry, and regulatory bodies. The team assembled a prioritised list of eligibility categories that should be included in the descriptions of all NSCLC clinical trials and recommended criteria for each category. Some suggestions were more lenient than what has typically been included in previous NSCLC trial eligibility criteria; for instance, the team recommended that most patients with prior or concurrent cancers, most patients with brain metastases, and most patients with mild liver impairment – all of whom would likely have been excluded in the past – still be included in trials.

The team also suggested that these categories be clearly laid out on public websites advertising clinical trials in an easily searchable format.

The FDA will be releasing draft guidance on NSCLC clinical trials in the near future and hold a public comment period before finalising them. Other interdisciplinary teams have already convened to standardise eligibility requirements for clinical trials of other cancer types.

If the new guidelines prove effective, Prof Gerber said that clinical trials will likely be easier to fill and provide more complete and timely data on new cancer interventions.

“If you can involve more patients in clinical trials, you’re more likely to complete those trials quickly. That’s going to lead to new treatments faster,” he said.

Source: UT Southwestern Medical Center

Categories : NeurologyTags :

Why do We Struggle to Recognise the Faces of People of Other Races?

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An Asian man and two white men enjoying St. Patrick’s Day Photo by Pressmaster on Pexels

In a study published in Scientific Reports, cognitive psychologists at the believe they have discovered the answer to a 60-year-old question as to why people find it more difficult to recognise faces from visually distinct racial backgrounds than they do their own.

This phenomenon named the Other-Race Effect (ORE) was first discovered in the 1960s. Humans seem to use a variety of markers to recognise people, instead of photographically memorising their faces, which may be based on what they observe in others around them. Hair and eye colour may be used by white people to tell apart other white people since those features vary considerably in that racial group. Setting may also be important: some people might not notice that the centre man in the picture above is Asian while his friends on either side are white.

The ORE has consistently been demonstrated through the Face Inversion Effect (FIE) paradigm, where people are tested with pictures of faces presented in their usual upright orientation and inverted upside down. Such experiments have consistently shown that the FIE is larger when individuals are presented with faces from their own race as opposed to faces from other races.

The findings spurred decades of debate, and social scientists took the view that indicates less motivation for people to engage with people of other races, making a weaker memory for them. Cognitive scientists posited it is down to a lack of visual experience of other-race individuals, resulting in less perceptual expertise with other-race faces.

Now, a team in the Department of Psychology at Exeter, using direct electrical current brain stimulation, has found that the ORE would appear to be caused by a lack of cognitive visual expertise and not by social bias.

“For many years, we have debated the underpinning causes of ORE,” said Dr Ciro Civile, the projects lead researcher.

“One of the prevailing views is that it is predicated upon social motivational factors, particularly for those observers with more prejudiced racial attitudes. This report, a culmination of six years of funded research by the European Union and UK Research and Innovation, shows that when you systematically impair a person’s perceptual expertise through the application of brain stimulation, their ability to recognise faces is broadly consistent regardless of the ethnicity of that face.”

The research was conducted at the University of Exeter’s Washington Singer Laboratories, using non-invasive transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) specifically designed to interfere with the ability to recognise upright faces. This was applied to the participants’ dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, via a pair of sponges attached to their scalp.

The team studied the responses of nearly 100 White European students to FIE tests, splitting them equally into active stimulation and sham/control groups. The first cohort received 10 minutes of tDCS while performing the face recognition task involving upright and inverted Western Caucasian and East Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) faces. The second group, meanwhile, performed the same task while experiencing 30 seconds of stimulation, randomly administered throughout the 10 minutes – a level insufficient to induce any performance change.

In the control group, the size of the FIE for own-race faces was found to be almost three times larger than the one found for other-race faces confirming the robust ORE. This was mainly driven by participants showing a much better performance at recognising own-race faces in the upright orientation, compared to other-race faces – almost twice as likely to correctly identify that they had seen the face before.

In the active tDCS group, the stimulation successfully removed the perceptual expertise component for upright own-race faces and resulted in no difference being found between the size of the FIE for own versus other-race faces. And when it came to recognising faces that had been inverted, the results were roughly equal for both groups for both races, supporting the fact that people have no expertise whatsoever at seeing faces presented upside down.

“Establishing that the Other-Race Effect, as indexed by the Face Inversion Effect, is due to expertise rather than racial prejudice will help future researchers to refine what cognitive measures should and should not be used to investigate important social issues,” said Ian McLaren, Professor of Cognitive Psychology. “Our tDCS procedure developed here at Exeter can now be used to test all those situations where the debate regarding a specific phenomenon involves perceptual expertise.”

Source: University of Exeter

Categories : CancerTags :

Parabens in Hair Products May Increase Breast Cancer Risk for Black Women

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Parabens, chemicals which are found in widely used hair and personal care products, cause harmful effects in breast cancer cells from Black women, according to a new study presented at ENDO 2022, the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting.

In the US, the lifetime risk of breast cancer is one in eight, and Black women are at a higher risk of getting breast cancer under the age of 40 than any other racial or ethnic group in that country. Breast cancer rates among Black South African women are also on the increase, but the cause remains unexplained and research in this area has been lacking.

“One reason for the higher risk of breast cancer may be exposure to harmful chemicals called endocrine-disrupting chemicals in hair and personal care products,” said lead researcher Lindsey S. Treviño, PhD. “These chemicals mimic the effects of hormones on the body.”

Parabens are endocrine-disrupting chemicals that are commonly used as preservatives in hair and other personal care products. Parabens cause breast cancer cells to grow, invade, spread, and express genes linked to cancer and to hormone action. Research showed that fewer paraben-free options are marketed to Black women.

“Black women are more likely to buy and use hair products with these types of chemicals, but we do not have a lot of data about how parabens may increase breast cancer risk in Black women,” Dr Treviño said. “This is because Black women have not been picked to take part in most research studies looking at this link. Also, studies to test this link have only used breast cancer cell lines from White women.”

The new study tested the effects of parabens on breast cancer cells from Black women. Parabens were found to increase the growth of a Black breast cancer cell line but not in the White breast cancer cell line. Parabens increased expression of genes linked to hormone action in breast cancer cell lines from both Black and White women. Parabens also promoted the spread of breast cancer cells, with a bigger effect seen in the Black breast cancer cell line.

“These results provide new data that parabens also cause harmful effects in breast cancer cells from Black women,” Dr Treviño said. 

The study is a part of a community-led project called the Bench to Community Initiative (BCI), which brings together scientists and community members (including breast cancer survivors) to create ways to reduce exposures to harmful chemicals in hair and personal care products in Black women with breast cancer. 

“While this project focuses on Black women, the knowledge we gain about the link between exposure to harmful chemicals in personal care products and breast cancer risk can be used to help all women at high risk of getting breast cancer,” Dr Treviño said.

Source: Endocrine Society