The Multi-risk Factors Promoting Uterine Fibroids in Women

Uterine fibroids (UF) is a benign tumour of the female reproductive system with a significant negative impact on women's social life, reproductive status and good quality lifestyle. The growth of this tumour depend on several risk factors and as such designing a specific management and treatment option become difficult. Hence, this study examined the correlation of social demographic, anthropometric and antioxidant enzymes on UF susceptibility in women at Ibadan, Oyo State. One hundred and ninety reproductive (95 fibroid and 95 non-fibroid women) was recruited for the study. The individual participants' demographic and anthropometric status was assessed using the pre-designed questionnaire. At the same time, the antioxidant enzyme activities of the participants were determined using the obtained venous blood from the objects screened for the study. The venous blood was collected inside the serum separator tube, and centrifugation ensued to obtain the serum needed for antioxidant enzyme determination. The result obtained from the demographic characteristic shows that subjects ages 26 to 35 (34.74 %) and 36 to 45 (35.26 %) have greater percentage values and could be noted as the critical ages for UF occurrence. Late marriage with percentage values of 47.37 & 38.95 correlate with educational pursuits where subjects with tertiary education have high percentage cases of fibroid (73.68 % ). This denoted positivity in UF women compared to non-UF. The body mass index (BMI), weight and abdominal circumference were significantly increased in UF women and as such have positive correlation with UF occurrence. There was also a decrease in the concentration levels of superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT) and reduced glutathione (GSH) with a significant increase in glutathione peroxidase (GPx) and glutathione-s-transferase (GST). The diversity in the activities of the antioxidant enzymes denotes impairment of this markers in fibroid women which is a peculiar characteristic of the neoplastic tumour. Thus, this study showed that occurrence of uterine fibroid is been promoted by many risk factors