Abdominal and pelvic adhesions: are blacks different?

Abstract

Studies conducted mostly in the United States bring evidence on racial disparities between blacks and whites in various pathologies including asthma and other allergies whose pathophysiology relates in part to innate immunological characteristics such as variation in host defense genes. There are various other pathologies evoking that black people could have an immune overreaction in response to diverse aggressions. For example, the prevalence of systemic lupus erythematous and systemic sclerosis has been found to be higher in black Americans compared to Caucasians suggesting, at least in part, racial disparities in immunological reactions. So, these arguments borrowed from other fibrotic disorders suggest a hypothetic racial disparity in abdominal and pelvic adhesions. Data on this condition according to racial disparity are scarce and should incite further researches to bring new findings on that question. As a result, a disparity between races will motivate the identification of genetic support which will give new insights in prevention and therapy of adhesions.

Pan African Medical Journal 2016; 23