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The prevalence of fibroids in Black women is directly related to additional disparities, including sexual abuse and racial discrimination.
A study out of Boston University published in the journal Epidemiology shows that women with fibroids are significantly more likely to have been sexually abused as children than those without them. According to the National Center on Violence Against Women in the Black Community, one in every four Black girls is sexually abused by the age of 18.
The author of the original study on the link between sexual abuse and fibroids, Renee Boynton-Jarrett, a pediatrician at Boston Medical Center, interviewed BU Today on her findings.
Boynton-Jarrett explained that stress – including that caused by sexual abuse – plays a role in hormone regulation in the body and that fibroids are what the pediatrician calls “hormonally responsive tumors.”
“What we know about stress, both acute stressors and chronic stressors that are experienced over time, is that it can influence the way the body regulates hormones. And it can particularly affect organ systems that are sensitive to hormones, which would include the uterus,” explains the doctor.
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MADAMENOIRE has extensively covered public figures who have suffered from fibroids, including Tiffany Cross and Cynthia Bailey. Tamar Braxton is another celebrity who has been open about her journey with fibroids. In 2021, Braxton joined a panel of other public figures for a roundtable discussion titled “Unmuting Fibroids: Getting Loud for Equal Care.” Just two years earlier, in 2019, during the season finale of Braxton Family Values, the R&B singer revealed that she had been molested as a child.
It’s now understood that fibroids feed on hormonal changes and that stress impacts hormone regulation. Racial discrimination is another stressful event to which Black women are disproportionately exposed, and research from the journal Epidemiology shows that racial discrimination is linked to an increased risk of fibroids.
By age 35, an estimated 60 percent of Black women develop fibroids, says the National Library of Medicine. Black women are two to three times more likely to require a hysterectomy to treat fibroids and less likely to experience a regression of symptoms after menopause than women of other racial groups. According to Sidecar Health, the cash price of a hysterectomy ranges from just over $5,000 to just under $15,000, depending on the state the patient lives in. Meanwhile, the Kaiser Family Foundation reports that Black women are less likely than white women to have adequate health coverage, or any at all, creating a major financial burden when the need for surgery arises.
The research conducted by Boynton-Jarrett, along with that from the journal Epidemiology, sheds light on the fact that the health inequity of fibroids is rooted in other racial inequities that Black women disproportionately experience.
