Geographic Patterns of Multiple Myeloma: Racial and Industrial Correlates, State of Texas, 1969-1971

Our plain-English summary of Geographic Patterns of Multiple Myeloma: Racial and Industrial Correlates, State of Texas, 1969-1971, by V.U. Agu, B.L. Christensen, P.A. Buffler (1980).

The study

• Authors: V.U. Agu, B.L. Christensen, P.A. Buffler
• Published: Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Volume 65 No1. October 1980
• Type of article: Journal article
• Our copy: from Johns-Manville's own medical library. The article is still under copyright, so we describe it here rather than post it.

In plain English

This ecologic study compared age-adjusted death rates from multiple myeloma, a blood cancer, among Texas residents during 1969-71 across Texas State economic areas. These are single counties or groups of counties with similar economic and social characteristics. The authors correlated the death rates with the percentage of each area's population over age 30 classified as black, and with the percentage employed in selected industries. The industries were chosen from an earlier hospital-based NIOSH study. The article does not discuss asbestos. Areas with a higher percentage of black residents had higher myeloma death rates (P less than 0.05). Before adjusting for race, beauty shops and the fabricated metal, machinery except electrical, chemical, paper, carpentry and mining industries showed significant associations. After adjusting for percentage black, the associations for beauty shops and carpentry remained significant, and the association for agriculture became significant (P less than 0.05). Correlations for the other industries were reduced. The authors concluded that race may be an important confounder in such analyses and that causal inferences cannot be drawn from area-level data. They suggested collecting occupational exposure data from multiple myeloma cases in east Texas.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Ecologic (area-level) correlation study of mortality rates
• Who was studied: Texas State economic areas (the scanned text appears to give 51), used to compare multiple myeloma deaths among Texas residents in 1969-71; individual-level data were not used
• Exposure: Percentage of each area's total population employed in selected industries, including beauty shops, fabricated metal, machinery except electrical, chemical, paper, carpentry, mining and agriculture. A demographic index, the percentage of the population over age 30 classified as black, was also used. No asbestos or fiber exposure is examined.
• Main results:
  • Across areas, the age-adjusted multiple myeloma mortality rate was positively and significantly correlated with the demographic index, the percentage of the population classified as black (P<0.05)
  • Before control for percentage black, significant associations were seen between the myeloma mortality rate and the percentage employed in beauty shops and in the fabricated metal, machinery except electrical, chemical, paper, carpentry and mining industries
  • After adjustment for percentage black, the correlation coefficients were reduced for beauty shops and the fabricated metal, machinery, chemical, paper and mining industries, but increased for carpentry and agricultural industries
  • After control for percentage black, the positive associations for beauty shops and carpentry remained significant, and the association for agricultural industries rose to statistical significance (P<0.05)
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that the findings emphasized the possible importance of race as a confounding variable in ecologic analyses of environmental and industrial exposures and myeloma mortality. They stated that the data supported a previous investigator's finding of a strong association between farming occupations and death from multiple myeloma, and suggested that collecting occupational exposure data from myeloma cases in east Texas may be fruitful.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The authors state that causal inferences cannot be drawn from ecologic data such as these
  • The authors state that the industry categories used were only roughly analogous to the RPMI/NIOSH study categories

Topics

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Myeloma, NIOSH, Occupational Exposure.

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