Association of the Joint Effect of Menopause and Hormone Replacement Therapy and Cancer in African American Women: The Jackson Heart Study

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Brenda W. Campbell Jenkins²  Clifton Addison²  Gregory Wilson²  Jiankang Liu³  Melody Fortune⁴  Kiana Robinson²  Monique White¹ 

[1] Project Health, Jackson State University, 350 West Woodrow Wilson Drive, Suite 701, Jackson, MS 39213, USA; E-Mail:;Jackson Heart Study Coordinating Center, Jackson State University, 350 West Woodrow Wilson Drive, Suite 701, Jackson, MS 39213, USA; E-Mails:;Jackson Heart Study, Department of Medicine, University of Mississippi Medical Center, 350 West Woodrow Wilson Drive, Suite 701, Jackson, MS 39213, USA; E-Mail:;Mississippi Department of Health, 570 East Woodrow Wilson, Jackson, MS 39213, USA; E-Mail:

关键词: cancer;    breast cancer;    hormone replacement therapy;    pre and post menopause;    African Americans;    Jackson Heart Study;    joint effect;    association;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ijerph8062491

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the US and in Mississippi. Breast cancer (BC) is the most common cancer among women, and the underlying pathophysiology remains unknown, especially among African American (AA) women. The study purpose was to examine the joint effect of menopause status (MS) and hormone replacement therapy (HRT) on the association with cancers, particularly BC using data from the Jackson Heart Study. The analytic sample consisted of 3202 women between 35 and 84 years of which 73.7% and 22.6% were postmenopausal and on HRT, respectively. There were a total of 190 prevalent cancer cases (5.9%) in the sample with 22.6% breast cancer cases. Menopause (p < 0.0001), but not HRT (p = 0.6402), was independently associated with cancer. Similar results were obtained for BC. BC, cancer, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, prevalent cardiovascular disease, physical activity and certain dietary practices were all significantly associated with the joint effect of menopause and HRT in the unadjusted analyses. The family history of cancer was the only covariate that was significantly associated with cancer in the age-adjusted models. In examining the association of cancer and the joint effect of menopause and HRT, AA women who were menopausal and were not on HRT had a 1.97 (95% CI: 1.15, 3.38) times odds of having cancer compared to pre-menopausal women after adjusting for age; which was attenuated after further adjusting for family history of cancer. Given that the cancer and BC cases were small and key significant associations were attenuated after adjusting for the above mentioned covariates, these findings warrant further investigation in studies with larger sample sizes of cancer (and BC) cases.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2011 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.