Epidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.)

BACKGROUND: Because endometriosis is diagnosed predominantly in young women, exposures occurring during childhood or adolescence may have a major impact on the disease. However, potential risk factors during this time period have received l…

BACKGROUND: Environmental chemicals may be associated with endometriosis. No published research has focused on the possible role of perfluorochemicals (PFCs) despite their widespread presence in human tissues. METHODS: We formulated two sam…

BACKGROUND: Understanding the health effects associated with environmental chemicals is challenging when individuals have concentrations at or below the laboratory limits of detection as well as when the values may round to zero or are pres…

BACKGROUND: Exploratory statistical analyses have been conducted on an epidemiologic data set in which the relationship was examined between exposure to polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) mixtures and risk of endometriosis in women. In that stu…

Assessing potential associations between exposures to complex mixtures and health outcomes may be complicated by a lack of knowledge of causal components of the mixture, highly correlated mixture components, potential synergistic effects of…

BACKGROUND: The goal of many studies in environmental epidemiology is to assess the relationship between chemical exposure and disease outcome. Often various assays can be used to measure a particular environmental exposure, with some assay…

BACKGROUND: Regular exercise has been associated with a 40%-80% reduction in risk for endometriosis in several case-control studies. However, women experiencing symptoms prior to their diagnosis may be less likely to exercise than healthy c…

BACKGROUND: Endometriosis, a dysplastic disease affecting approximately 5%-10% of US reproductive-age women, has been linked to exposures indicating high circulating estrogen levels. One such exposure may be night shift work, which has been…

BACKGROUND: Progression of endometriosis is considered estrogen-dependent. Dietary soy isoflavones may affect the risk of endometriosis, and polymorphisms in estrogen receptor genes may modify this association. We examined associations amon…

BACKGROUND: Although studies have found elevated risks of certain cancers linked to infertility, the underlying reasons remain unclear. METHODS: In a retrospective cohort study of 12,193 U.S. women evaluated for infertility between 1965 and…

Previous epidemiologic observations consistently suggest that suppression of ovulation, tubal ligation, and hysterectomy reduce the risk of ovarian cancer and that perineal talc use increases the risk. We examined these and other risk facto…

This paper proposes a standard definition of endometriotic disease for epidemiologic studies and suggests subject-selection strategies to increase the validity of clinic- or population-based studies of the disease. Although endometriosis ca…

The objective of this case-control study is to identify factors associated with the prevalence of minimal or mild endometriosis among infertile women. Cases (N = 329) were women diagnosed by laparoscopy with minimal or mild endometriosis an…

We summarize the epidemiologic literature on the effect of life-style factors such as cigarette smoking, alcohol and caffeine consumption, physical exercise, body mass index, and drug use on female infertility. We identified relevant papers…

The present study utilized a case-control design to assess the relation between menstrual cycle factors and risk of endo-metriosis in women age 19–45 years. From a gynecologic specialty clinic in Western New York in 1987, we identified 104 …