Time for global health policy and research leaders to prioritize endometriosis

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Endometriosis is an incurable, systemic inflammatory disease affecting millions, necessitating global public health policy and research prioritization for awareness, care, and effective treatments.

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This Nature Communications Comment argues that endometriosis, an incurable underdiagnosed systemic inflammatory disease affecting about 10% of people with a uterus, suffers from low public health prioritization, inadequate awareness, and siloed care, leading to long diagnostic delays and limited research progress. The authors synthesize evidence that current knowledge of pathogenesis is incomplete (including limits of the retrograde menstruation paradigm and lack of comprehensive animal models), and that diagnosis and treatment remain constrained by the absence of reliable non-invasive biomarkers and suboptimal therapies with recurrence and side-effect burdens. They explicitly highlight limitations of the field, including heterogeneity of lesion/symptoms, inconsistent clinical trial outcome reporting, and underinvestment compared with other diseases. Relevance to endometriosis: the entire paper is a call to prioritize endometriosis research and global policy (including WHO fact sheet discussion, funding comparisons, and care recommendations), making it centrally about endometriosis.

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Abstract

Endometriosis is an incurable, under-diagnosed, systemic inflammatory disease affecting millions world-wide. Common symptoms include life-impacting pain, gastrointestinal/urinary symptoms, excessive fatigue, and infertility. Global public health policies are urgently needed to promote awareness, implement multidisciplinary care, and fund research for aetiology, biomarker discovery, and effective therapies for symptoms associated with endometriosis.
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References

1. Saunders, P. T. K. & Horne, A. W. Endometriosis: etiology, pathobiology, and therapeutic prospects. Cell 184,2 8 0 7–2824 (2021). 2. Missmer, S. A. et al. Impact of endometriosis on life-course potential: a narrative review. Int J. Gen. Med 14,9 –25 (2021). 3. As-Sanie, S. et al. Assessing research gaps and unmet needs in endometriosis. Am. J. Obstet. Gynecol.221,8 6–94 (2019). 4. Giudice, L. C., Oskotsky, T. T., Falako, S., Opoku-Anane, J. & Sirota, M. Endometriosis in the era of precision medicine and impact on sexual and reproductive health across the lifespan and in diverse populations.FASEB J. 37,e 2 3 1 3 0( 2 0 2 3 ) . 5. Mirin, A. Gender disparity in the funding of diseases by the U.S. National Institutes of health. J. Women’s Health (Larchmt.) 30,9 5 6–963 (2021). 6. Simitsidellis, I., Gibson, D. A. & Saunders, P. T. K. Animal models of endometriosis: Repli- cating the aetiology and symptoms of the human disorder.Best. Pr. Res Clin. Endocrinol. Metab. 32,2 5 7–269 (2018). 7. Coxon, L., Horne, A. W. & Vincent, K. Pathophysiology of endometriosis-associated pain: a review of pelvic and central nervous system mechanisms.Best. Pr. Res Clin. Obstet. Gynaecol. 51,5 3–67 (2018). 8. Agarwal, S. K. et al. Clinical diagnosis of endometriosis: a call to action. Am. J. Obstet. Gynecol. 220,3 5 4 . e 3 5 1–354.e312 (2019). 9. Davenport, S., Smith, D. & Green, D. J. Barriers to a timely diagnosis of endometriosis: a qualitative systematic review.Obstet. Gynecol.142,5 7 1–583 (2023). 1Epub 2023 Jul 13. PMID: 37441792. 10. Becker, C. et al. ESHRE guideline: endometriosis. Hum. Reprod. Open 2022,1 –26 (2022). 11. Guo, S. W. & Groothuis, P. G. Is it time for a paradigm shift in drug research and development in endometriosis/adenomyosis?Hum. Reprod. Update 24,5 7 7–598 (2018). 12. Lamvu, G., Carrillo, J., Ouyang, C. & Rapkin, A. Chronic pelvic pain in women: a review.JAMA 325, 2381–2391 (2021). 13. Simoens, S. et al. The burden of endometriosis: costs and quality of life of women with endometriosis and treated in referral centres.Hum. Reprod. 27,1 2 9 2–1299 (2012). 14. Ellis, K., Munro, D. & Clarke, J. Endometriosis is undervalued. Front Glob. Women’s Health 3, 902371, https://doi.org/10.3389/fgwh.2022.902371 (2022). 15. D ’Hooghe, T. & Hummelshoj, L. Multi-disciplinary centres/networks of excellence for endometriosis management and research: a proposal.Hum. Reprod.21, 2743–2748 (2006).

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Kevin Kuan, University of Edinburgh, for Fig.1 graphic design and critical content editing. Author contributions L.C.G. conceived the topic and wrote the initial draft, which was extensively revised with A.W.H. and S.A.M.. L.C.G. contributed much of the scientific information about endometriosis patho- genesis and pathophysiology. A.W.H. contributed key concepts about public health relevance and endometriosis clinical symptoms, clinical care, and health disparities. S.A.M. contributed key concepts in the epidemiology of endometriosis, status of funding for research and multi- disciplinary care models. L.C.G., A.W.H., and S.A.M. each provided references throughout the manuscript and in areas of their expertise and assured accuracy of citations and worked as a team on revising the manuscript resulting in its final form. Competing interests L.C.G. is funded by the National Institutes of Health P01 HD106414, “UCSF Stanford Endo- metriosis Center for Discovery, Innovation, Training and Community Engagement ”. She is co- author of patent filed by the Regents of the University of California, San Francisco, U.S. Application Serial No. 63/149,022, “Endometriosis-Related Methods and Compositions ”.S h e is past-President of the World Endometriosis Society and the American Society for Repro- ductive Medicine, and is a consultant for Celmatix, Myovant Sciences, and Gesynta Pharma. AH’s institution (University of Edinburgh) has received payment for consultancy and grant funding from Roche Diagnostics to assist in the early development of a possible blood diagnostic biomarker for endometriosis. A.W.H. ’s institution has received payment for con- sultancy fees from Gesynta and Joii. A.W.H. has received payment for a presentation from Theramex. A.W.H. ’s instutution has received grant funding from the MRC, NIHR, CSO and Wellbeing of Women for endometriosis research. A.W.H. is listed as a co-inventor on a UK Patent Application (No· 2217921·2). A.W.H. is President-elect of the World Endometriosis Society and co-Editor in chief of Reproduction and Fertility. AH has been a member of the NICE and ESHRE Endometriosis Guideline Groups. AH is a Trustee and Medical Advisor to Comment nature communications (2023) 14:8028 | 3 Endometriosis UK. S.A.M. receives research support from National Institutes of Health, USA Department of Defense, AbbVie, and Marriott Family Foundations. She is President of the World Endometriosis Society, the Field Chief Editor for Frontiers in Reproductive Health and has served on advisory boards for AbbVie, Roche, and Abbott. Additional information Correspondenceand requests for materials should be addressed to Linda C. Giudice. Peer review informationNature Communicationsthanks Serdar E. Bulun and Sarah Hawkes, for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Reprints and permissions informationis available at http://www.nature.com/reprints Publisher’sn o t eSpringer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in pub- lished maps and institutional affiliations. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. © The Author(s) 2023 Comment nature communications (2023) 14:8028 | 4

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mesh:D004715endometriosisinfertility

MeSH descriptors

Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Female Female Female Female Global Health Global Health Global Health Global Health Health Policy Health Policy Health Policy Health Policy Humans Humans Humans Humans

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