Personal care product use and health outcomes in the NIEHS Sister Study
Scientists from the National Toxicology Program, NIEHS, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill report that women with the highest use of personal care products in the Sister Study were more likely to have used hormone medications in the form of hormonal therapy or contraceptives. The Sister Study, composed of 50,884 women with a sister who had breast cancer, is a nationwide effort to identify environmental and genetic risk factors for breast cancer. The researchers hope to better understand the relationship between product use and health outcomes.
A statistical method called latent class analysis was used to divide the subjects into classes based on product type — beauty, skincare, or hair — and frequency of use. Personal identifiers for the population studied included race — non-Hispanic black and non-Hispanic white — age, menopausal status, education, and geography.
The team found that moderate lotion use was the most common product usage grouping among both black and white women. They also noted that race was a distinguishing factor in generating the subgroups across personal care product classes. Within subgroups, the highest correlation was between infrequent users of beauty products and infrequent users of skincare products. Exogenous hormonal exposures were strongly associated with higher levels of beauty and skincare product use. (AD)
Citation: Taylor KW, Baird DD, Herring AH, Engel LS, Nichols HB, Sandler DP, Troester MA. 2017. Associations among personal care product use patterns and exogenous hormone use in the NIEHS Sister Study. J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol; doi:10.1038/jes.2016.82 [Online 25 January 2017].