- An international study identified an association between hair straighteners and increased risk of developing uterine cancer.
- One of the main reasons would be the chemical that these types of products contain.
- In addition, other risk factors also influence women such as obesity or overweight, diabetes, high blood pressure and/or taking estrogen supplements.
In Mexico, according to the Ministry of Health (SSa), in 2018 there were 7,266 cases of uterine cancer or endometrial cancer. With this, it ranked second in terms of malignant neoplasms, just below cervical cancer, displacing that of ovary whose frequency had ranked second in the previous period.
According to the Dr. Aparna Kamatgynecologist-oncologist and director of the Gynecologic-oncology Division of the Houston Methodist Hospital“Uterine cancer is also known as endometrial cancer and is generally the most common cancer we see in the United States.”
Main risk factors
He added that the main risk factors for this tumor are indiscriminate exposure to estrogens. In general, the most common risk factors are women who are obese or overweight, have diabetes, have high blood pressure, and/or take estrogen supplements. These people have a higher risk of developing this type of cancer, which is curable if detected early.
In addition to the risk factors linked to hormonal issues, recently the National Institutes of Health (NIH), conducted a study that revealed that women who used chemical hair straightening products had a higher risk of developing uterine cancer compared to women who did not report using these products.
The study data includes 33,497 US women ages 35 to 74 who participated in the Sister Study, led by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of the NIH, and which seeks to identify risk factors for breast cancer and other health conditions. The women were followed for almost 11 years, during which time diagnosed 378 cases of uterine cancer.
According to Dr. Kamat, despite the follow-up of this study, “a direct link between the use of hair-straightening products and uterine cancer has not been shown. This study was looking to look at risk factors for breast cancer and other conditions, so what they did was they asked these women all kinds of different questions and one of them was whether they used different types of hair products in the last year, including dyes, straighteners, perms and other products”.
They then followed these women for almost 11 years, and what they found was that “of those more than 33,000, about 378 had endometrial cancer. That’s when they compared women who used any products versus women who never used them. Women who used these products had a twice the risk of developing cancer, especially those who used straighteners. And those who applied them more than four times in the previous year had a 2.5 times higher risk of developing uterine cancer.”
She added that while there’s no direct link, what is known is that many of these straighteners have chemicals like keratin, cyclosiloxanes and other things that, when heated, can release carcinogenic formaldehyde that is absorbed through the root.
There is no association with hair dyes
The study also found that women using these treatments who started using them at a younger age were more likely to develop endometrial cancer. It should be noted that they found no association between women who used hair dyes or who used perms, the only association they found was with those who used straighteners.
In closing, Dr. Kamat said there are many different risk factors for developing endometrial cancer. This is just an association, so one recommendation would be to try not to use hair straighteners as often. But it must not be forgotten that the greatest risk factor for this type of tumor is being overweight, diabetes and arterial hypertension and these can be controlled.
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