Women who often use chemical hair straightening products could face greater than twice the danger of uterine cancer in comparison with those that never use them, in accordance with a latest study published Monday.

The findings, published within the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, have particular relevance for Black women, who make up a majority of users of straightening products in america.

Scientists lauded the work, calling for motion regardless that more work is required to verify the conclusions, in what’s an understudied area of research.

Lead creator Alexandra White, a cancer epidemiologist with the National Institutes of Health led the study, told AFP it grew out of her previous research that found a link between everlasting hair dye and straighteners and breast and ovarian cancers.

“We all know that these straighteners contain many various chemicals, including endocrine disruptors, and we’d expect them to have hostile health effects for hormone sensitive cancers,” she said.

“That led us to increase our previous work, just specializing in uterine cancer.”

Uterine cancer accounts for 3 percent of all latest cancers but is probably the most common cancer of the feminine reproductive system, with greater than 65,000 latest cases and 12,500 deaths are expected in 2022.

The outlook is usually good if the cancer is caught early, but treatment often involves removing the uterus, which might preclude child-bearing.

The brand new paper relied on data from greater than 33,000 US women aged 35-74 who took part within the Sister Study, which is led by the federal government and designed to discover risk aspects for cancer and other conditions.

Over the course of 11 years, 378 women developed uterine cancer, which primarily affects tissue lining the uterus called endometrium. Type 1, probably the most common type of the cancer, is considered linked to having an excessive amount of of the sex hormone estrogen.

Women who reported using hair straightening products up to now yr were almost twice as more likely to develop uterine cancer in comparison with women that never used them, the researchers found.

The link was stronger still for frequent users — defined as greater than 4 uses up to now 12 months. These women had around 2.5 times the danger of developing the cancer in comparison with women who never used the products.

No similar associations were found for other hair products including dyes, bleach, highlights, or perms.

“The priority is that there are chemicals in these products that act essentially like estrogen within the body,” said White, disrupting normal hormonal processes that would influence cancer risk.

A second possibility is that some products include carcinogens, comparable to formaldehyde, to interrupt the bonds between keratin proteins in hair, which changes its structure and makes it straight.

Though the study didn’t specifically ask women what products they used, a specific keratin treatment referred to as “Brazilian blowouts” was popular on the time the ladies were enrolled for this study, between 2003 and 2009, though its use has decreased since.

White said one in every of the strengths of the study was that it asked women in regards to the products years before they really went on to develop cancer, which limits the potential for people misremembering or wrongly attribute their exposures.

But a key limitation was they weren’t in a position to collect information on the forms of straighteners used or specific brands, which might have further strengthened evidence.

White said more lab work needs to be done to check the proposed ways the chemicals cause cancer, in addition to more population studies that recruit racially diverse populations and capture information on brands.

A related commentary within the journal acknowledged some shortcomings, but said the study added to a “growing body of evidence” that “hair-straightening products are related to hormone-related cancers in women,” and called for evidence-driven policy changes.

It added that the private care product industry upheld Eurocentric “racialized standards of beauty” and persistently failed to evolve to being transparent about chemical constituents and formulations.