Risk of Chronic Opioid Use Among Women With Endometriosis [16M]

Stephanie E. Chiuve, Ryan D. Kilpatrick, Natalia Petruski‐Ivleva, Lani R. Wegrzyn, Michael C. Snabes, Brian T. Bateman
In: Obstetrics & Gynecology · 2019 · vol. 133(1) , pp. 145S · doi:10.1097/01.aog.0000559289.36694.14 · W2944222951
article OA: closed CC0
Full text JSON View on OpenAlex View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by gemini-2.5-flash-lite, 2026-06-10 ⓘ

Women with endometriosis have a doubled risk of chronic opioid use compared to women without, along with increased risks of dependence, overdose, and other adverse outcomes.

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

⚙ AI-generated deep summary by qwen3.7-flash, 2026-08-18 · read from full text ⓘ

This study analyzed US commercial insurance claims to compare the risk of chronic opioid use between women with and without endometriosis over a two-year period. Women diagnosed with endometriosis exhibited a significantly higher relative risk of developing chronic opioid dependence compared to controls, even after adjusting for various demographic and clinical comorbidities. Among those who became chronic users, the median dose per fill increased substantially, and these patients faced elevated risks for serious adverse outcomes including overdose, opioid dependence diagnoses, falls, and altered mental status. This paper is centrally about endometriosis — specifically examining the long-term pharmacological management and associated risks of chronic opioid use in this patient population.

Read from the paper's body, not the abstract. Not a substitute for reading the paper. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Women with endometriosis may be prescribed opioids for management of endometriosis-related pain symptoms or in the context of surgical procedures. Once exposed, these women may be vulnerable to chronic opioid use given their comorbidity profile. METHODS: Women with an initial claim for endometriosis (N=37,142) and women without (N=2,596,871), aged 18-50, were identified from a US commercial insurance claims database and followed for 2 years. Chronic opioid use was defined as ≥10 fills or ≥-120 days covered over 1 year. Regression models estimated the association between endometriosis and chronic opioid use, and sequelae of chronic use among women with endometriosis. RESULTS: The 2-year risk of chronic opioid use was 4.4% in women with endometriosis and 1.1% in women without. The relative risk (RR) for chronic opioid use in women with endometriosis v. without was 2.11 (95% CI 2.00-2.23) controlling for demographics, pain, mental health comorbidities, substance abuse, use of benzodiazepine, stimulants, antipsychotic medications and prior opioids. Among women with endometriosis, the median dose per fill increased by 50% over 2 years among chronic opioid users and 0% among non-chronic users. Chronic opioid use among women with endometriosis was associated with higher risk of an opioid dependence diagnosis (RR 8.52; 95% CI 6.67-10.9), overdose (RR 3.97; 95% CI 1.90-8.30), altered mental status (RR 2.92; 95% CI 2.16-3.93), falls (RR 2.43; 95% CI 2.02-2.92) and constipation (RR 1.87; 95% CI 1.71-2.05). CONCLUSION: Women with endometriosis have a greater risk of chronic opioid use and its sequelae. Physicians should consider the consequences of opioid prescribing for endometriosis-associated pain.
Full text 1,922 characters · extracted from oa-doi-fallback · 4 sections · click to expand

Introduction

Women with endometriosis may be prescribed opioids for management of endometriosis-related pain symptoms or in the context of surgical procedures. Once exposed, these women may be vulnerable to chronic opioid use given their comorbidity profile.

Methods

Women with an initial claim for endometriosis (N=37,142) and women without (N=2,596,871), aged 18-50, were identified from a US commercial insurance claims database and followed for 2 years. Chronic opioid use was defined as ≥10 fills or ≥-120 days covered over 1 year. Regression models estimated the association between endometriosis and chronic opioid use, and sequelae of chronic use among women with endometriosis.

Results

The 2-year risk of chronic opioid use was 4.4% in women with endometriosis and 1.1% in women without. The relative risk (RR) for chronic opioid use in women with endometriosis v. without was 2.11 (95% CI 2.00-2.23) controlling for demographics, pain, mental health comorbidities, substance abuse, use of benzodiazepine, stimulants, antipsychotic medications and prior opioids. Among women with endometriosis, the median dose per fill increased by 50% over 2 years among chronic opioid users and 0% among non-chronic users. Chronic opioid use among women with endometriosis was associated with higher risk of an opioid dependence diagnosis (RR 8.52; 95% CI 6.67-10.9), overdose (RR 3.97; 95% CI 1.90-8.30), altered mental status (RR 2.92; 95% CI 2.16-3.93), falls (RR 2.43; 95% CI 2.02-2.92) and constipation (RR 1.87; 95% CI 1.71-2.05).

Conclusion

Women with endometriosis have a greater risk of chronic opioid use and its sequelae. Physicians should consider the consequences of opioid prescribing for endometriosis-associated pain.

Text is read by the "Ask this paper" AI Q&A widget below. Extraction quality varies by source — PMC NXML preserves structure cleanly, OA-HTML may include some navigation residue, and OA-PDF can have broken hyphenation. The publisher copy (via DOI) is the canonical version.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

⚙ Ask this paper AI returns verbatim quotes from the full text · source: oa-doi-fallback ⓘ

Answers must be backed by verbatim quotes from this paper's full text. Hallucinated quotes are dropped automatically; if no verbatim passage answers the question, we say so. How this works

Condition tags

endometriosis

Citation neighborhood (sparse)

Too few in-corpus citations on either side for a chart; here are the lists.

Cited by (1)

Cited by (1)

Source provenance

openalex
last seen: 2026-06-10T17:14:06.276822+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK