Influência da posição sócio-econômica ao longo da vida nas desigualdades de cor/raça na ocorrência de miomas uterinos: Estudo Pró-Saúde

Abstract

The uterine myomas (UM) are considered the most frequent benign neoplasm of the female reproductive system. U.S. studies showed that UM occur more frequently among black women, but the nature of this association remains largely unexplained in the literature. In another direction, due to the characteristics of the UM (slow growth and latency period) considerable amount of epidemiological studies use a cross-sectional design, which can lead to methodological problems such as those related to the use of age collected transversally (later the occurrence of UM) as a proxy for age of onset of tumors. This thesis was divided into three parts, as follows. The first, descriptive, aimed to estimate the occurrence of self-reported UM by demographic and socio-economic characteristics in the study population (article 1). The second, whit an analytical component, aimed to evaluate the role of life-course SEP like mediator of the effect of color/race in the occurrence of self-reported UM (article 2). The third, with a methodological nature, aimed comparing measures of association between variables collected transversally, in analysis that include the covariate age at the time of data collection and analysis that considered the age at diagnosis of UM (article 3).For this, we analyzed cross-sectional data from selfadministered questionnaires completed by female civil servants at a Rio de Janeiro university during the baseline data collection of the Pró-Saúde Study. The analyzed variables were: self-reported history of medical diagnosis of UM, UM with symptoms prior to diagnosis, hysterectomy due to UM and also the socio-demographic characteristics, reproductive life and health care access variables. The results showed that UM risk increased with the age and darkening of skin color, and the lifecourse SEP did not mediate this association (articles 1 and 2); and that despite differences of small magnitude, it seems that the age at the time of data collection is less recommended than the age at diagnosis in cross-sectional analysis (article 3).