Keloids and Ultrasound Detected Fibroids in Young African American Women

OBJECTIVE Keloids and fibroids share a number of biologic and demographic similarities however there are no published reports of the association between them. The objective of this study was to investigate the association between self-reported keloids and ultrasound detected fibroids in a population of young African American women. STUDY DESIGN The Study of Environment, Life-style & Fibroids (SELF), is a volunteer cohort of over 1600 African American women aged 23-34 years recruited in Detroit, Michigan. Enrollment occurred between December 2010 and December 2012. Data are available for the first 1196 participants. Participants self-reported a history of raised (hypertrophic) scars or scars extending beyond the limits of the original injury (keloid) and had an enrollment pelvic ultrasound examination to detect prevalent fibroids. Log linear regression was used to model the association between abnormal scars and prevalent fibroids controlling for possible covariates. Among women with fibroids, associations between particular fibroid characteristics (tumor location, size or number) and scarring were assessed using chi-square and Mann Whitney U-tests. RESULTS Both abnormal scarring (keloids, 9.0%; hypertrophic scars, 28.3%) and fibroids (23.3%) were common in this cohort. There was no indication [adjusted Risk Ratio (95% Confidence Interval): 0.7 (0.5-1.1)] of an association between self-reported keloids and prevalent fibroids. Nor was there any association with hypertrophic scars. Specific characteristics of the prevalent fibroids were not associated with abnormal scarring. CONCLUSION Despite similarly dysregulated extracellular matrices in keloids and fibroids, these conditions did not tend to co-occur in this young African American population.