Idées reçues sur l'endométriose

This French chapter discusses the idea that sexual violence could contribute to endometriosis, framed by population data from the INED Virage survey (2020) reporting that about 15% of women in France report having experienced sexual violence during their lives. It explains a mechanistic hypothesis linking childhood/adolescent stressors to long-term alterations in stress responses, chronic inflammation, and later psychosomatic symptoms such as pelvic pain, noting that studies exploring a direct link to endometriosis have produced contradictory results. It highlights a recent study of 168 women with endometriosis and 103 without that found a significant association between pelvic pain and histories of sexual violence in childhood or adolescence, with the correlation observed regardless of whether endometriosis was present, which the chapter uses to argue that endometriosis itself was not associated with sexual violence. The chapter acknowledges that findings across studies differ and provides this as a key limitation of the evidence. This paper is centrally about endometriosis — it reviews evidence and hypotheses connecting sexual violence, chronic inflammation, and pelvic pain in endometriosis, emphasizing a debated lack of a direct association.

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