FRIDAY, Sept. 27, 2002 (HealthDayNews) -- Women with endometriosis often face a double or triple whammy when it comes to serious health problems, and they suffer with the painful pelvic disorder for 10 years on average before being accurately diagnosed.
That's what researchers at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and George Washington University found in a new study of data from more than 3,500 women with endometriosis, a condition in which the lining of the uterus grows in parts of the abdominal cavity. Results of this research appear today in the journal Human Reproduction.
"Our research shows women with endometriosis are much more likely than other women to suffer from a range of other distressing or disabling conditions, including autoimmune, endocrine, allergic, chronic pain, and fatigue disorders," says Dr. Pamela Stratton, chief of the gynecology consult service at the NICHD. "This is the first time such an association has been documented in a population-based study."
Stratton and Ninet Sinaii, a doctoral student in epidemiology at George Washington, analyzed the information provided to the Endometriosis Association by women who suffer from the condition and have sought the support group's help in dealing with it. Endometriosis is characterized by pain, inflammation, bleeding and reproductive problems. About 90 percent of the women who completed the survey were of reproductive age.
The researchers also discovered another important aspect of the condition based on women's reports: The painful symptoms of endometriosis tend to be present a long time before it's accurately diagnosed.
"In addition to finding the dramatically increased prevalence of immune disorders and other conditions in these women and the association of the endometriosis with significant pain and disability in their lives, there was typically a 10-year delay between the beginning of their pelvic pain and the diagnosis of endometriosis by a physician," Sinaii says. "That is a very worrying finding."
Stratton and Sinaii were not able to determine whether endometriosis actually develops shortly after a female has her first menstrual period, as some other studies have suggested, or whether it develops over a period of years. But they had no difficulty concluding that some changes in the medical response to women's reports of pain in the pelvic region are overdue.
"We don't yet know if early diagnosis and treatment would keep endometriosis from leading to chronic pelvic pain or not," Stratton says. "But we do believe it is essential for pelvic pain to be promptly and appropriately evaluated and treated in females, particularly in adolescent girls. It's important that doctors who care for adolescents consider the diagnosis of endometriosis, as well as the presence of other potentially serious conditions when their young patients complain of such pain."
The connection of endometriosis with autoimmune inflammatory diseases was also of considerable interest to the researchers. They found, for example, that among women with endometriosis about one-fifth had more than one other disease and slightly more than 30 percent of those with co-existing diseases had also been diagnosed with either fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome. Some of these women had other autoimmune or endocrine diseases as well.
"Chronic fatigue syndrome was more than a hundred times more common in women with endometriosis," Sinaii says. "Hypothyroidism -- that is, an underactive thyroid gland -- was seven times more common, fibromyalgia was twice as common, and autoimmune inflammatory diseases like systemic lupus erythematosus, Sjogren's syndrome, and rheumatoid arthritis, as well as multiple sclerosis, occurred more frequently."
Stratton believes these findings can help many women in their quest to understand what's happening when they fall ill and fail to improve after diagnosis and treatment for any single one of these conditions.
"The results suggest women with endometriosis may require screening and treatment for autoimmune diseases, and women with autoimmune diseases may also need screening and treatment for endometriosis," she says. "Our results show there is a tremendous overlap that is not presently being addressed in most clinical situations."
What To Do
To learn more about endometriosis and the latest in endometriosis research and care, link to the Endometriosis Association . You can also try the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, but you'll need Adobe Acrobat, which you can download for free.
