Endometriosis: The Role of Pharmacotherapy

Chrysanthi Sardeli, Aris Daniilidis, Antonios Goulas, Georgios Papazisis, Dimitrios Kouvelas, J Tzafettas
In: Current Women's Health Reviews · 2012 · vol. 8(2) , pp. 138–149 · doi:10.2174/157340412800194894 · W2313376166
article OA: closed CC0
Full text JSON View on OpenAlex View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-07, 2026-07-14 ⓘ

This review discusses current and novel pharmacotherapeutic approaches for endometriosis, noting that existing treatments are symptomatic, not curative, and often have adverse effects or short-term results.

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

⚙ AI-generated deep summary by claude@2026-07, 2026-07-14 · read from full text ⓘ

This paper is a review article assessing evidence on pharmacotherapy for endometriosis, drawing on studies retrieved from PubMed, Scopus, and ISI Web of Knowledge using keyword-based inclusion across multiple languages. It describes endometriosis as an estrogen-dependent condition associated with dyspareunia, dysmenorrhea, chronic pelvic pain, and infertility, while noting that underlying aetiology and pathophysiology remain poorly understood. The review concludes that available pharmacotherapies are symptomatic rather than curative, primarily by reducing ovarian estrogen production or antagonizing estrogen action, with recurrence after stopping treatment and limited suitability for women seeking conception. This paper is centrally about endometriosis — focusing on the role, efficacy, limitations, and symptom-relief strategies of endometriosis pharmacotherapy.

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

Abstract

Objective: This review discusses the general principles on which classic and novel approaches in the pharmacotherapy of endometriosis are based and presents the types of drugs involved. Design: Review article. Data sources: Relevant studies were retrieved from Pubmed, Scopus and ISI -Web of knowledge databases. Eligibility criteria: All articles in English, French, German and Danish languages that contained the following keywords: endometriosis, pharmacotherapy, pain relief, chronic pelvic pain & infertility, were retrieved and read and all relevant data were included in this review. Results: Endometriosis is an estrogen-dependent, benign gynaecologic disorder, characterized by the presence of tissue morphologically and biologically similar to normal endometrium outside its normal location. The underlying aetiology and pathophysiology are poorly understood. Dyspareunia, dysmenorrhea, chronic pelvic pain and infertility are characteristic and debilitating manifestations of the disease. Several pharmacotherapeutic approaches are available. Currently available pharmacotherapies are not curative but symptomatic and aim either at decreasing ovarian estrogen production or at antagonizing estrogen action. Recurrence is the rule after cessation of treatment while pharmacotherapy is not suitable for women seeking conception. Conclusions: No curative pharmacotherapeutic options for treating endometriosis are currently available and most options complicate the course of treatment due to adverse events and short-term results. Novel approaches aim to take advantage of recent advances in endometriosis research but limited data are available regarding chronic use and long-term safety and efficacy. Keywords: Chronic pelvic pain, endometriosis, pain relief, pharmacotherapy
Full text 1,609 characters · extracted from oa-doi-fallback · 4 sections · click to expand

Abstract

Design: Review article. Data sources: Relevant studies were retrieved from Pubmed, Scopus and ISI -Web of knowledge databases. Eligibility criteria: All articles in English, French, German and Danish languages that contained the following keywords: endometriosis, pharmacotherapy, pain relief, chronic pelvic pain & infertility, were retrieved and read and all relevant data were included in this review.

Results

Endometriosis is an estrogen-dependent, benign gynaecologic disorder, characterized by the presence of tissue morphologically and biologically similar to normal endometrium outside its normal location. The underlying aetiology and pathophysiology are poorly understood. Dyspareunia, dysmenorrhea, chronic pelvic pain and infertility are characteristic and debilitating manifestations of the disease. Several pharmacotherapeutic approaches are available. Currently available pharmacotherapies are not curative but symptomatic and aim either at decreasing ovarian estrogen production or at antagonizing estrogen action. Recurrence is the rule after cessation of treatment while pharmacotherapy is not suitable for women seeking conception.

Conclusions

No curative pharmacotherapeutic options for treating endometriosis are currently available and most options complicate the course of treatment due to adverse events and short-term results. Novel approaches aim to take advantage of recent advances in endometriosis research but limited data are available regarding chronic use and long-term safety and efficacy.

Keywords

Chronic pelvic pain, endometriosis, pain relief, pharmacotherapy

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

endometriosischronic_pelvic_paindysmenorrheadyspareuniainfertility

Citation neighborhood (no data yet)

We don't have any in-corpus citations linked to this paper yet. The paper's references may be in our DB but unresolved to ``paper_id`` (resolution happens at ingest when the cited DOI matches a row we already have). Run the cross-source citation reconcile pass to retry.

Source provenance

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