The association of body mass index with endometriosis and disease severity in women with pain

Sarah J. Holdsworth‐Carson, Uri P. Dior, Eliza M Colgrave, Martin Healey, Grant W. Montgomery, Peter A. W. Rogers, Jane E. Girling
In: Journal of Endometriosis and Pelvic Pain Disorders · 2018 · vol. 10(2) , pp. 79–87 · doi:10.1177/2284026518773939 · W2805191249
article OA: closed CC0 ⤵ 48 in-corpus citations
View on OpenAlex View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-07 ⓘ

This study found that while obesity is associated with a lower frequency of endometriosis, obese women with the condition exhibit significantly higher disease severity.

One-sentence paraphrase of the abstract; not a substitute for reading it. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

Introduction: There is a well-established inverse relationship between body mass index and frequency of endometriosis. However, these population-based studies have relied mostly on self-reported cases of endometriosis, rather than surgically confirmed endometriosis where disease severity has been objectively assessed. The aim of the current retrospective study was to establish whether the established relationship between endometriosis and low body mass index was independent of disease severity. Methods: Women with menstrual and/or pelvic pain undergoing laparoscopy for suspected endometriosis were recruited for this retrospective study (n = 509). Women were grouped by body mass index (kg/m 2 ) according to World Health Organization criteria: underweight (<18.5), normal (18.5–24.99), pre-obese (25–29.99) or obese (≥30). Endometriosis was scored according to the revised American Fertility Society system. Data were analysed based on body mass index and endometriosis status to identify any relationship between body mass index and disease. Results: The average body mass index of women with endometriosis was 25.0 kg/m 2 . The body mass index distribution of women with endometriosis differed relative to women in the general population. As expected, fewer obese women had endometriosis than in the lower body mass index categories. However, the obese women who did have endometriosis had significantly higher revised American Fertility Society scores compared to women with normal and pre-obese body mass indices. Discussion: Our results are consistent with the established finding of an inverse relationship between body mass index and endometriosis. The novel finding from this study is that obesity is associated with increased disease severity and reduced frequency of stage I endometriosis. It remains unclear what role body mass index has in the cause or effect of endometriosis; we speculate that body mass index may be useful for sub-classifying the disease.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

endometriosis

Citation neighborhood (2-hop)

Papers in the corpus that this work cites (lower rings, blue) and that cite this one (upper rings, green). Dot size scales with the paper's in-corpus citation count — bigger dot = more influential within the endo/adeno field. Click a dot to open that paper. Outer rings show 2-hop neighbours — papers reached through the immediate citers/citees. [ collapse to 1-hop ]

References (35)

Cited by (48)

Source provenance

openalex
last seen: 2026-06-04T00:00:01.174412+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK