Background: Previous research has revealed high rates of traditional medicine usage in Nigeria. Reports of widespread contamination of herbal medicine products and higher rates of noncompliance with Western medications among traditional medicine users have raised concerns about the safety of traditional medicine use. Few studies have explored how demographic factors predict rates of traditional medicine use in the general population. Methods: We conducted interviews of 748 adult women recruited from the communities in the city of Ibadan, Nigeria from 2013 to 2015. A structured questionnaire was created to collect data on rates of traditional medicine use and demographic factors such as age, education, ethnicity, and occupation. Multivariate logistic regressions were run to examine factors related to traditional medicine use, and the effects were measured with odds ratios (OR) along with 95% confidence interval (95%CI). Results: The overall proportion of traditional medicine use was 81.6%. Women from the Ibo and Hausa ethnic groups were significantly less likely to use traditional medicine than the majority Yoruba group (OR 0.25, 95%CI 0.10-0.63;, OR 0.43, 95%CI 0.24-0.76) respectively). In addition, educated women were less likely than their noneducated counterparts to have used traditional medicine, with the biggest effect seen in women with a secondary education (OR 0.42, 95%CI 0.21-0.85). Conclusions: We found a high rate of traditional medicine usage, consistent with that found in prior research. A novel finding was the significance of ethnicity as a predictor for usage rates.

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Giant cell arteritis (GCA) requires a prompt diagnosis to avoid significant morbidity among the elderly. An accurate diagnosis is also paramount given the side effect profile of long-term corticosteroid treatment. Temporal artery biopsy (TAB) has long remained the gold standard for the diagnosis of GCA but requires an invasive procedure that is not without risk. This article discusses the argument for and against the use of noninvasive imaging including ultrasound, magnetic resonance imaging, and positron emission tomography scanning for the diagnosis of GCA. It also provides a suggested diagnostic algorithm for when to consider noninvasive imaging versus TAB.

PURPOSE Breast cancer remains the leading cause of cancer in women throughout the world, and its incidence has been increasing markedly in Africa. Women of African ancestry not only develop breast cancer at earlier ages but also have more aggressive breast cancers, with higher prevalence of TP53 mutations and triple-negative breast cancer. Although environment-induced TP53 mutagenesis has been well described in liver and lung cancers, few studies have explored its role in breast cancer. In addition, most prior studies were done in white populations and lacked generalizability to women of other ancestries. This pilot study aimed to investigate the association between environmental risk factors and somatic mutation status. A sub-aim was to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of a questionnaire-based method for gathering environmental exposure data. METHODS Twenty-nine patients with breast cancer and 33 patients from Ibadan, Nigeria, who had participated in the Nigerian Breast Cancer Study, were contacted to complete an environmental risks questionnaire that assessed household air pollution, diet, occupational hazards, and sleep habits. The questionnaire was translated into Yoruba and conducted with local interpreters, who obtained informed consent from all participants. Both the institutional review boards at the University of Chicago and the University of Ibadan approved the project. RESULTS The results showed that cases were more likely to report living close to a major road, waste incinerator, or factory ( P = .046). There were also significant differences in occupation ( P = .000), with cases more likely to report professional occupations. They were also more likely to report occupational exposures to mineral dust, exhaust, chemicals, and endocrine disruptors; night shift work; and preference for well-done meat, although these did not reach statistical significance. CONCLUSION This study suggests that examining exposures to environmental risk factors may be a promising avenue for future breast cancer research. The study design limited the validity of comparing exposures between cases and controls but demonstrated that a questionnaire-based method is both feasible and effective at gathering environmental exposure data. Future studies would benefit from more formal interviewer training to improve the quality of the data collection, more culturally relevant questions to assess stressful life events, and a prospective design to reduce recall bias and loss to follow-up.