New Way to Diagnose Endometriosis
August 19, 2009 by Peggy Rowland
Filed under Women's Health
Currently, laparoscopy is the only way to accurately diagnose endometriosis. Many women (like me) go years without knowing that they have the chronic condition. While laparoscopy is minimally invasive surgery with a fairly quick recovery time, it’s also expensive and requires general anesthesia.
I’ve always wondered why there isn’t an easier way to diagnose such a common disease.
Endometriosis affects up to 15% of women of reproductive age. If it isn’t caught early enough, severe cases may result in infertility and possibly major surgery.
New research published today in Human Reproduction provides a bit of hope that new diagnostic methods may be on the way. Researchers from Australia, Jordan and Belgium found that taking a small sample of the endometrium, the lining of the uterus, can provide a nearly 100% accurate way of diagnosing the disease. The sample, taken through the vagina, is analyzed for the density of nerve fibers, which may predict the presence of endometriosis.
Researchers noted that the density of nerve fibers in the endometrium of women with the disease is 14 times higher than in healthy women. It’s estimated that this method of diagnosing may fail to correctly detect endometriosis in only 1% of cases.
One of the lead reseachers, Dr. Al-Jefout, emphasized that the new testing method requires “a carefully collected endometrial biopsy and an experienced immunohistochemical pathology laboratory” to correctly analyze the nerve fibers.
(Image via stock.xchng)
This is wonderful news. I’ve always wondered why surgery was the only way to diagnose this disease as well.
Cherie, I think a lot of doctors guess too. Some women even get treated for it without knowing for sure. Hopefully, the new test will become a standard.
This is another example (as I discussed in http://www.gynsurgery.be and http://www.mondoginecologico.it) that interpretation of research data should be done carefully and that conclusions often are overstretched and/or biased.
The observation of higher incidences of nerve fibers in the endometrium of women with endometriosis is nice research. To suggest this as a non invasive diagnostic test however is premature.
1. First, an association does not permit to conclude about cause and effect. We know ( more than 50 articles) since 20 years that the endometrium of women with endometriosis is slightly different. The question remains whether these differences are a consequence of endometriosis or whether these differences signal a constitution (as suggested in the endometriotic disease theory). Knowing what happens after surgery for endometriosis could give a hint : eg the decrease in natural killer cells in endometriosis is not affected by surical excision of endometriosis whereas CA125 is.
2. Second the article knowingly and willingly disregard subtle endometriosis which is present intermittently in many women and which should not be considered a disease, as discussed in the literature since more than 10 years.
My guess is that the increased nerve endings is a sign besides many others that a women will have more retrograde menstruation and subtle endometriosis, something I am considering since many years as irrelevant findings at laparoscopy since subtle endoemtriosis does not cause pain or infertility.