PURPOSE: Menstrual cycle characteristics are markers of endocrine milieu. However, associations between age at menarche and adulthood sex steroid hormone levels have been inconsistent, and data on menstrual characteristics and non-sex stero…
STUDY QUESTION: Is there a temporal relationship between endometriosis and infertility? SUMMARY ANSWER: Endometriosis is associated with a higher risk of subsequent infertility, but only among women age <35 years. WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY: E…
OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the use of fertility treatments among a large cohort of women in the United States. DESIGN: Cohort study. SETTING: Nurses' Health Study II. PATIENT(S): Ten thousand thirty-six women who reported having used fertili…
BACKGROUND: Endometriosis is a prevalent but enigmatic gynecologic disorder for which few modifiable risk factors have been identified. Fish oil consumption has been associated with symptom improvement in studies of women with primary dysme…
In this Journal feature, information about a real patient is presented in stages (boldface type) to an expert clinician, who responds to the information, sharing his or her reasoning with the reader (regular type). The authors’ commentary f…
Nafarelin, a gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonist, has been shown to be effective in the treatment of endometriosis. The standard dosage is 200 micrograms bid intranasally. Side effects most commonly include those associated with estrogen…
This was a retrospective study analyzing the need for reoperation for recurrent endometriomas after surgical therapy. There were 104 women who were followed after surgical excision of endometriomas, with a cross section of 46 gynecologic su…
CONTEXT: Female reproduction spans a developmental life arc from fetal life and childhood, through puberty to the reproductive years, and, finally, ovarian follicle depletion and the onset of menopause. OBJECTIVE: This invited review highl…
OBJECTIVE: To investigate a previously hypothesized relation between natural hair color and endometriosis. DESIGN: Prospective cohort study. SETTING: Nurses' Health Study II with 10 years of follow-up. PARTICIPANT(S): A total of 90,065 w…
OBJECTIVE: [1] To examine the effects of body mass index (BMI), age, cigarette smoking, cause of infertility, and use of oral contraceptives on baseline serum testosterone (T), and [2] to examine associations between baseline serum T and IV…
The authors investigated the relations of demographic, anthropometric, and lifestyle factors with endometriosis in the Nurses' Health Study II prospective cohort. During 10 years of follow-up (1989-1999), 1,721 cases of laparoscopically con…
OBJECTIVE: To investigate the relation between the fetal environment and endometriosis. DESIGN: Prospective cohort study. SETTING: Nurses' Health Study II with 10 years of follow-up. PARTICIPANT(S): Eighty-four thousand, four hundred for…
OBJECTIVE: To clarify the temporal complexities of the relation between reproductive factors and endometriosis. METHODS: We analyzed 10 years of prospective data from the Nurses' Health Study II cohort. Information was obtained through que…
PURPOSE: Measurements of TSH and prolactin are generally included in the evaluation of female infertility, but their value in women coming to in vitro fertilization (IVF) has been questioned. METHODS: In this study, we sought to investigat…
Two major methodological problems that impact clinical research in endometriosis are the absence of a low-cost, highly reliable method for diagnosing endometriosis and the possibility that endometriosis is actually multiple different diseas…
PURPOSE: The effect of endometriomas on oocyte quality, embryo quality, and pregnancy rates in in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycles was evaluated. METHODS: Forty-five women had "chocolate" cysts aspirated at the time of oocyte retrieval, an…
Estrogen-dependent diseases often regress when estrogen production is reduced. Endometriosis is an estrogen-responsive disease, and the pelvic pain associated with it improves when estrogen production is reduced with bilateral oophorectomy …
OBJECTIVE: To define the clinical presentation and follow-up of women found to have endosalpingiosis. METHODS: Subjects included for retrospective study were identified as having had a pathologic diagnosis of endosalpingiosis. Those subjec…
OBJECTIVE: To report on a series of cases of lateral cervical displacement and uterosacral ligament scarring associated with endometriosis. DESIGN: Case series. SETTING: Academic medical center. PATIENT(S): Three nulliparous women with c…
OBJECTIVE: To report a simple technique for diagnosing stenosis of the external cervical os and to evaluate an association between stenosis of the external cervical os and endometriosis in women with chronic pelvic pain. DESIGN: Case serie…
OBJECTIVE: To examine serum androgen profiles in women undergoing ovarian stimulation with exogenous gonadotropins in the setting of IVF-ET. DESIGN: Prospective study. SETTING: University hospital IVF-ET program. PATIENT(S): Seventeen ov…
Chronic pelvic pain is a condition that affects one in seven women of reproductive age in the United States. Direct and indirect medical costs associated with this condition are estimated to be more than $3 billion annually before factoring…
To explore a possible connection between endometriosis, Müllerian anomalies, and possession of the N314D allele of the gene for galactose-1-phosphate uridyl transferase (GALT), we studied 33 women with endometriosis attending a fertility cl…