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Exploring Black-White Differences in the Relationship Between Inflammation and Timing of Menopause

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Abstract

Understanding the biosocial context of menopausal timing offers insight into social and health inequalities. Prior research on inflammatory chronic conditions suggests that inflammation may predict how early women experience menopause. We explore the ability of black race to moderate the overall relationship between chronic inflammation and timing of menopause. We use data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project on inflammation, age of last menstruation, and race as well as relevant social and medical covariates. We conduct event history modeling to predict age at menopause by inflammatory biomarker levels. Using interaction analysis, we investigate whether being black may shape the overall relationship between inflammation status and menopause timing. Our analyses find no significant statistical interactions between black race and inflammation in predicting menopausal onset. However, we do identify independent correlational relationships between inflammation and black race (r = 0.136) and between menopausal timing and black race (r = −0.129) as well as inflammation (r = −0.138) that emerge as significant in corresponding regression models. We conclude that race probably does not moderate associations between inflammation and menopause. Yet, we also note that the original parameter estimate for black race’s impact on menopausal onset (HR = 1.29, p < 0.05) becomes non-significant in a model that includes inflammation (HR = 1.06, p < 0.01). To translate our findings into policy and practice implications, we present alternate conceptualizations of black-white disparity in the inflammation-menopause relationship and recommend future research using mediation modeling.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Dr. J Sumerau for the thorough review, feedback, and proofreading. No outside funding was used in support of this research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Behavioral Sciences and Social Medicine, College of Medicine, Florida State University, 1115 West Call Street, Suite 3200, Tallahassee, FL, 32306-4300, USA

    Alexandra C. H. Nowakowski

  2. Department of Sociology, College of Social Sciences and Public Policy, Florida State University, 526 Bellamy Building, 113 Collegiate Loop, Tallahassee, FL, 32306-4300, USA

    Katelyn Y. Graves

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  1. Alexandra C. H. Nowakowski
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Correspondence to Alexandra C. H. Nowakowski.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the dataset used for this study but was not collected for this study specifically due to the secondary and retrospective nature of the research.

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Nowakowski, A.C.H., Graves, K.Y. Exploring Black-White Differences in the Relationship Between Inflammation and Timing of Menopause. J. Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities 4, 410–417 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-016-0241-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-016-0241-0

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