A study on the correlation between physical and mental health and sexual function in patients with urinary tract endometriosis

Background Evidence regarding the impact of urinary tract endometriosis (UTE) on quality of life and sexual function remains limited. This cross-sectional study aimed to compare quality of life and sexual function between patients with UTE and those with other types of deep infiltrating endometriosis (DIE), and to identify factors associated with these outcomes.

From July 2020 to December 2023, 282 women with confirmed DIE were enrolled and categorized into the UTE group (n = 85) and the non-UTE group (n = 197). A self-designed questionnaire was used to collect general characteristics, and corresponding medical records were reviewed. The Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) and the 12-Item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-12), yielding Physical Component Summary (PCS) and Mental Component Summary (MCS) scores, were used to assess sexual function and quality of life, respectively.

The UTE group had higher rates of abnormal urinary erythrocytes, ureteral abnormalities, proteinuria, hydronephrosis, and preoperative double-J stent placement, but a lower incidence of anal discomfort (all P 0.05). Mental health was positively correlated with orgasm and sexual satisfaction (P < 0.05). Bivariate analyses showed that physical health was associated with household monthly income (P = 0.013) and painkiller use (P = 0.016), while mental health was associated with painkiller use (P = 0.009), dysmenorrhea (P = 0.029), and history of miscarriage (P = 0.010). Multiple linear regression analyses indicated that body mass index (BMI) and painkiller use were significantly associated with physical health (P < 0.05), whereas history of miscarriage and FSFI satisfaction scores were significantly associated with mental health (P < 0.05).

In patients with UTE, sexual function (orgasm and satisfaction domains) was positively correlated with mental health-related quality of life. BMI and painkiller use were significantly associated with physical health-related quality of life, while history of miscarriage and sexual satisfaction were significantly associated with mental health-related quality of life in women with UTE. Similar content being viewed by others Abbreviations - UTE: - Urinary tract endometriosis - DIE: - Deep infiltrating endometrisosis - FSFI: - Female Sexual Function Index - SF-12: - 12-Item Short-Form Health Survey - PCS: - Physical component summary - MCS: - Mental component summary - BMI: - Body mass index Funding This work was supported by (1) Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (Grant No.2023A1515010018 and No.2025A1515012542); (2) Science and Technology Project of Guangzhou, China (Grant No. 202201011555); (3) Training Program of Sun Yat-sen University (Grant No.202210698); (4) The Third Ke Lin Nursing Talent Training Program (KLHL2025BC02). Author information Authors and Affiliations Corresponding authors Ethics declarations Ethics approval and consent to participate This study is in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and has been approved by the Ethics Committee of the First Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, with approval number: Lun Shen [2021] No. 237. Each patient had signed an informed consent form. Consent for publication Not applicable. Competing interests The authors declare no competing interests. Additional information Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Rights and permissions Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. About this article Cite this article Tan, J., Huang, J., He, G. et al. A study on the correlation between physical and mental health and sexual function in patients with urinary tract endometriosis. BMC Women's Health (2026). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12905-026-05068-9 Received: Accepted: Published: DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12905-026-05068-9