Your Relaxer is Giving You Fibroids?



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If you haven't heard yet, there is a report in the American Journal of Epidemiology by researchers at the University of Boston that claims there is a link, in Black American women, between the use of relaxers and incidences of uterine fibroid tumours. This topic is very hot at the moment
and I've actually been trying to keep out of the web induced mob psychology of posting on it and making it true.
There are so many people talking about this right now and views seem to be polarized in the belief/disbelief corners. I find it strange that there are very few people who are on the fence, like me, and waiting for more info. Every one and their mamma has an opinion on this paper, but from what I can tell very few have actually read it. Unfortunately, the few who have read it aren't putting it on the net for the rest of us to see for ourselves and make our own opinions. After going through 8 pages of Google search results all I found was a bunch of news reports and people who based their blog posts on those news reports. The problem with news reports is that they are meant to cause a reaction and may be highly sensationalized.

I'm not a research expert but I remember one little thing I was taught back in school and that is "correlation is NOT causality". In simpler terms, just because things go together doesn't mean one caused the other.  Here are my initial misgivings with this research.
Black women have a higher incidence of uterine fibroids than any other race in America, Black women also have a higher incidence of relaxer use than any other race in America. Black women who have never used relaxers still get uterine fibroids and fibroids don't go away because women stop using relaxers.
The thing that keeps popping out at me is the word BLACK maybe the link is the fact that these women are black? The causation may be genetic and not environmental.
There's lots of talk about the use of relaxer, frequency of burns etc, but I'm wondering what the incidence of fibroids was among women who don't/ have never relaxed.

I have more questions and, at this rate, I could write a book filled with my ignorance and postulations, so I'm going to stop here. I'm currently looking for the full report so I can get a grip on stuff like the parameters, sample size, control methods, length of the study and other nerdy info, but once I do I'll form my opinion. Even then, it'll be an opinion on this specific study. Not enough research has been done to allow us to either accept or reject the hypothesis made by this group of scientists. I would really like to see a study done in Africa...


In the meantime her are a few of the more informative articles/blog posts on the research and it's results.
Curlynikki
The Final Call and
One for the nerds