Reproductive and Lifestyle Factors Associated with Endometriosis in a Large Cross-Sectional Population Sample

Rama Saha, Ralf Kuja-Halkola, Ralf Kuja‐Halkola, Per Tornvall, Lena Marions
Journal of women's health (2002) · 2016 · vol. 26(2) , pp. 152–158 · doi:10.1089/jwh.2016.5795 · PMID:27632570 · W2522252274
article OA: bronze CC0 ⤵ 43 in-corpus citations
📄 Open PDF View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-08 ⓘ

This study found that late menarche and higher parity are inversely associated with endometriosis, while infertility is strongly associated with it in a large sample of Swedish women.

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

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: Despite the high prevalence of endometriosis among women of reproductive age, risk factors or markers for developing the condition remain largely unknown. Many of the published studies are based on small selected samples. We therefore investigated the relationships of reproductive and lifestyle factors with endometriosis in a large sample of Swedish female twins. MATERIAL AND METHODS: This cross-sectional study included 28,822 women. Among these, endometriosis was reported by 1,228 women and the self-reported diagnosis was confirmed by medical records. Potential risk factors or markers for risk considered were age at menarche, level of education, body mass index (BMI), parity, oral contraceptive (OC) use, infertility, coffee consumption, smoking, and alcohol intake, which were investigated using logistic regression with crude and adjusted analyses. We performed within-pair analysis to examine the sensitivity of the results. RESULTS: Late age at menarche and higher parity showed an inverse association and infertility showed a strong association with endometriosis. We observed positive associations with coffee consumption and smoking and an inverse association with OC use in crude analysis but not in adjusted analysis. There were no significant associations between level of education, BMI, or alcohol intake and endometriosis. Within-pair analysis showed persistent inverse association of parity and association of infertility with endometriosis. CONCLUSIONS: Our study suggests that late age at menarche and higher parity are inversely associated and infertility is strongly associated with endometriosis. Future studies are needed to explore the significance of these factors in the diagnosis of endometriosis and understanding of its etiology.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

mesh:D004715endometriosisinfertility

MeSH descriptors

Endometriosis Infertility, Female Life Style Reproduction Smoking Adult Age Factors Cross-Sectional Studies Endometriosis Female Humans Infertility, Female Logistic Models Menarche Middle Aged Parity Pregnancy Risk Factors Smoking Sweden

Citation neighborhood

Papers in the corpus that this work cites (lower rings, blue) and that cite this one (upper rings, green). Dot size scales with the paper's in-corpus citation count — bigger dot = more influential within the endo/adeno field. Click a dot to open that paper. [ expand to 2 hops ] — adds papers reached through this work's immediate citers/citees. Heavier; up to 60 extra dots.

References (47)

Cited by (43)

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-06-04T01:30:01.192114+00:00
openalex
last seen: 2026-06-04T00:00:01.174412+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-05-13T22:20:54.390225+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK