Endometriosis more common in teenage girls than previously thought

Teenage girls are just as likely to suffer with endometriosis as adult women, a finding which UCL and University of Birmingham researchers say is surprising and could help doctors provide better treatments for younger patients. Endometriosis is a debilitating condition, caused by excessive growth of the womb's tissue lining, which presents with pain in the lower abdomen, typically around the time of a period. It affects around one in 10 adult women, however it has traditionally been thought to be less common in teenage girls, with doctors often putting such discomfort in younger patients down to dysmenorrhoea (severe period pain). In the largest study of its kind, published in the Journal of Pediatric & Adolescent Gynecology , researchers undertook a systematic review* and meta-analysis of 231 international studies to understand how likely it was for adolescent girls, who presented with symptoms, to have endometriosis. In total, researchers found 19 studies with meaningful cohort data. The studies included 1,243 symptomatic adolescent girls and of those 1,011 went on to have a laparoscopy, which is the common surgical procedure used to diagnose endometriosis. The research revealed 648 of 1011 (64%) were found to have endometriosis.