Chronic pain related disorders and breast and cervical cancer are more prevalent among African-American women compared with non-Hispanic White women. However, few studies address how racial differences in the context of comorbidity may compound these disparities. This study used secondary analysis of the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) to assess racial differences in breast and cervical...

Bacterial vaginosis (BV) is a common vaginal disorder in woman in child bearing age associated with adverse outcomes including preterm birth and acquisition of sexually transmitted diseases and pelvic inflammatory disease. This condition is highly unfavorable and causes severe complications related to reproductive system of women. According to literature reports, it has affected 10%-20% of Cauc...

Factors leading to racial and ethnic differences in non-marital fertility, which account for nearly 41% of all births the U.S., are not well understood. This study examines how mother–child relationships parental control shape likelihood having a birth adulthood among non-Hispanic White, Black, Hispanic, Asian women from 1994–2009. paper uses data Waves I, III, IV Add Health (n = 7171) event-hi...

Although it has been hypothesized that culture and religion play an important role in sexuality, the relative roles of acculturation and religiosity on ethnic differences in sexual attitudes have not been often empirically explored. The present study assessed differences in sexual attitudes in Euro-American, Asian, and Hispanic American populations using measures of acculturation to analyze the...

Birth certificate data were employed to determine the prevalence of maternal smoking in Chicago communities by race and ethnicity. For purposes of comparison, we present data for the U.S. and the city of Chicago as a whole. Across the city of Chicago, 5.6% of women smoked during pregnancy, a rate much lower than the national average of 13.9%. The maternal smoking rate among non-Hispanic (NH) Bl...

BACKGROUND Research on temporal mortality trends for stage IV breast cancer is limited, especially among older patients by race. We evaluated factors associated with overall, breast cancer-specific and other-cause mortalities using contemporary population data. PATIENTS AND METHODS Using the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results-Medicare linked data, we identified older women (≥ 66 year...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Genetic factors that influence interindividual variation in levels of plasma homocysteine, a risk factor for vascular disease, are not fully understood. We performed linkage analyses to identify genomic regions that influence homocysteine levels in blacks and non-Hispanic whites. METHODS Subjects (n=2283) belonged to hypertensive sibships and included 1319 blacks (63+/-...

BACKGROUND Total body iron calculated from serum ferritin and soluble transferrin receptor concentrations allows for the evaluation of the full range of iron status. OBJECTIVE We described the distribution of total body iron and the prevalence of iron deficiency (ID) on the basis of total body iron in US pregnant women. DESIGN We examined data from the National Health and Nutrition Examinat...

INTRODUCTION Prenatal smoking prevalence remains high in the United States. To reduce prenatal smoking prevalence, efforts should focus on delivering evidence-based cessation interventions to women who are most likely to smoke before pregnancy. Our objective was to identify groups with the highest prepregnancy smoking prevalence by age within 6 racial/ethnic groups. METHODS We analyzed data f...

BACKGROUND Diabetes and obesity have reached epidemic proportions in the U.S. with rates consistently higher among Hispanics as compared to non-Hispanic whites. Among Hispanic women diagnosed with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), 50% will go on to develop type 2 diabetes within 5 years of the index pregnancy. Although randomised controlled trials among adults with impaired glucose tolerance...