Black women with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) have higher risk factors for heart disease, diabetes, and stroke compared to white women. This is the result of a study that was presented virtually at ENDO 2021, the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society.
PCOS is a common condition characterized by irregular menstrual periods, disorders of normal metabolism, and excessive hair growth. PCOS affects up to 10% of all women of childbearing age. The disorder increases your risk for health conditions such as infertility, obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, depression, and certain cancers.
“We have identified a disproportionate risk of health complications in black women with PCOS in the US, highlighting the need to fully identify and eliminate health differences in women with PCOS,” said lead researcher Maryam Kazemi, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in Professor Marla Lujan’s laboratory in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY
Most of PCOS research has focused on white women, Kazemi said. To find out if black women with PCOS have the same health risks, she conducted a systematic review of all available data on the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and stroke, collectively known as cardiometabolic disease, to look for health differences between black and white Women with PCOS in the United States. The review included 11 studies with a total of 2,851 women (652 blacks and 2,199 white).
The analysis found that black women with PCOS have a worse cardiometabolic risk profile than white women, including higher insulin levels and higher insulin resistance (risk factors for diabetes) and increased blood pressure despite lower triglyceride levels than white women.
“Our results support the need to raise public awareness of the disproportionate burden of cardiometabolic risk in young black women with PCOS,” said Kazemi. “These results have implications for improving the sensitivity of clinical evaluations in black women to avoid underestimating cardiovascular risk in women with PCOS.”
White women with PCOS are more likely to have anxiety than black women with an Endocrine Society-provided condition
Quote: Black women with PCOS have higher risk factors for heart disease, diabetes and stroke (2021, March 20), as reported on March 22, 2021 from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-03-black-women-pcos-higher -factors were obtained from .html
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