This is one of the main results of a new study to be published in the January 2011 in the American Journal of Public Health issue. The study was conducted by Vicki Freedman, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan Institute for social research and his colleagues at the University of medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.
One of a growing number of studies documenting the connection between neighbourhood characteristics and chronic health conditions, it is the first to show that living in widely separated areas with high rates of crime is linked to an increased risk of developing cancers of all kinds - for example white and black.
The chance of developing cancer is 31 percent higher for older men living in these types of neighborhoods and 25 percent higher among older women.
The study also revealed that live in low-income neighbourhoods increases the chance that women would develop heart problems by 20 percent. They found no effect on older men.
Researchers based in part on the study of health data analysis & retirement ISR, a longitudinal nationally representative survey over 20,000 Americans 50 years and older, funding primarily by the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health.
For their analysis, researchers analyzed the detailed measurements of the stories of individual health, with several social indicators, economic, and physical conditions of the neighbourhoods in which people lived.
According to the authors, the findings of the study are potentially avenues by which the neighbourhood environment may influence on the development of chronic diseases. For example, a large part of the previous research on cancer and the environment insisted on factors of lifestyle such as tobacco, diet and exercise and exposure to carcinogens, rather than on the social and economic aspects of environment.
Although the link between racial segregation and health is often cited as of the root causes of mortality among blacks and health disparities and the whites, the most common explanation for the link is segregation influence social and economic deprivation and individual socio-economic development. "But we found that the segregation and crime increase the chances of developing cancer even after we have checked for socio-economic resources to individuals and neighbourhood level," said Freedman.
The researchers also examined the levels of exposure to air pollution and other environmental toxins, but concluded that the crime rate and levels of racial segregation independently predict onset of cancer.
"The remarkable similarity in size and strength of this relationship for both men and women is rather surprising given the differences in the types of cancer that develops each sex," she says. "This suggests that a non-specific biological mechanism may be involved, perhaps a stress reaction that interrupts the ability of the body to fight against the development of cancerous cells.
Call Freedman and co-authors to research further the social and biological mechanisms underlying this link, noting that the addition of measures biological study of health & retirement of the international search report the designated region of Inuvialuit Panel Study of Income Dynamics and other national longitudinal surveys allows this type of analysis in the near future.
Warning: this article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those PharmaLive.com or its staff.
Source of the story:
The story above is reproduced (with drafting adaptations by staff at PharmaLive.com) materials provided by The University of Michigan.
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited for this.
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