Endometriosis and Cancer

Sushil Giri, Bhagyalaxmi Nayak
In: Endometriosis - Recent Advances, New Perspectives and Treatments · 2022 · doi:10.5772/intechopen.102393 · W4210772916
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⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-07 ⓘ

Endometriosis, a chronic inflammatory disease, shares growth and metastasis characteristics with malignant tumors and has been associated with an increased risk of various ovarian, endometrial, cervical, and extra-ovarian cancers.

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⚙ AI-generated deep summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-07 ⓘ

This paper reviews proposed links between endometriosis and cancer, focusing on how ectopic endometrial tissue could undergo malignant transformation and on reported associations with specific malignancies. It summarizes evidence including shared genetic alterations (e.g., PTEN, ARID1A, p53 loss of heterozygosity), histologic criteria for diagnosing endometriosis-associated ovarian cancer, and cohort findings that endometriosis correlates with higher incidence of certain ovarian cancer subtypes, while noting that it remains unclear whether endometriosis causes cancers or is merely co-existent. Mechanistic sections discuss chronic inflammation, iron-driven oxidative stress, hyperestrogenic signaling, and pathway activation as contributors, along with diagnostic imaging features and controversy over whether prognosis differences reflect endometriosis itself or earlier-stage detection. This paper is centrally about endometriosis — its central topic is endometriosis-associated cancer (including ovarian cancer) and the mechanisms, diagnostic criteria, and clinical literature describing the relationship.

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Abstract

Endometriosis is a chronic debilitating inflammatory disease of women, with the growth of ectopic endometrium in extrauterine sites like rectovaginal septum, peritoneal surfaces, or ovaries, etc. Though endometriosis is not regarded as a malignant disorder, it does have some features common to malignant disease. They are; local and distant metastasis, invasion and destruction to adjacent structures, unrestricted growth, development of new blood vessels. The association between endometriosis and ovarian, endometrial, and cervical cancers and between endometriosis and extra-ovarian malignancies has been reported in different kinds of literature. Clear cell and endometrioid ovarian carcinomas are presumed to have developed from endometriosis. Ovarian seromucinous borderline tumors, low-grade serous ovarian carcinomas, adenosarcoma, and endometrial stromal sarcomas may also arise from endometriosis. However, it is not very clear whether endometriosis has undergone malignant transformation or simply is found co-existent with cancer. Endometriosis itself may increase a woman’s risk of developing non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, malignant melanoma, and breast cancer.

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endometriosis

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