Highlights of our article

Epidemiology of endometriosis is important to learn about the cause of endometriosis

“Endometriosis epidemiology is important since the prevalence and severity of endometriosis might be linked to pollution and to our modern lifestyle, comprising food intake, chemical disruptors, postponement of the first pregnancy, and stress, as indicated by “a career women’s disease”.
Most important is that understanding if and why prevalence and severity are increasing would permit prevention.

Endometriosis disease triangle : etiology and epidemiology

What did we know already ?

We did know very little since endometriosis epidemiology studies are based upon hospital discharge records. Our review explains why these observations are biased and cannot be trusted. Moreover a distinction between subtle and typical and cystic and deep endometriosis was not made.

What does this article add to our knowledge ?

Our article first explains why subtle and typical and cystic and deep endometriosis should be considered separately.

We do not know whether subtle and typical and cystic endometriosis are increasing or not since the data cannot be trusted.

All deep endometriosis surgeons strongly feel that the prevalence and the severity of deep endometriosis is increasing.
In South Italy deep endometriosis is actually very frequent although very rare 20 years ago.
To the best of our knowledge this are the best data available today.

What are the practical conclusions for patients

Endometriosis : mechanism for the effect of pollution, food intake, chemical disruptors and stress

Our article on endometriosis epidemiology should raise concern that the increase in deep endometriosis is caused by pollution and maybe our modern lifestyle, comprising food intake, chemical disruptors, postponement of the first pregnancy and stress.

We therefore strongly suggest that solid endometriosis epidemiological data are collected and eventually public measures taken.

read the full paper here