Endometriosis With or Without Chronic Pain Linked to Anxiety and Depression

The findings are based on data from almost 13 million women.

Key Points

Highlights: 

• There seems to be a link between endometriosis and anxiety with or without chronic pain.

Importance:

• These findings underscore the importance of providing adequate medical symptom management to women with endometriosis and proper counseling to those with anxiety and depression.

What’s done here:

• This is a retrospective population-based study on almost 13 million women who were hospitalized between 2007 and 2014. 

Key results:

• Between those dates, there was an increase in the prevalence of chronic pain but a decrease in endometriosis.
• Women who had both endometriosis and chronic pain were the ones who were most likely to experience anxiety.

Limitations:

• The Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project is a cross-sectional database that does not link patients' records over the years and therefore the study cannot establish a temporal association between endometriosis, chronic pain, anxiety, and depression.

Lay Summary

There may be a potential link between endometriosis, with and without chronic pain, anxiety, and depression, according to a new study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders.

“We recommended that clinicians provide proper medical management of endometriosis-related pain through symptom management and adequate counseling for those suffering from anxiety and depression,” the authors of the study said.

In order to assess the association between endometriosis, chronic pain, anxiety, and depression, a team of researchers from McGill University in Montréal, Québec, Canada, led by Dr. Eva Suarthana retrospectively analyzed 12,904,324 hospitalized women who were in the the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) database from 2007 to 2014.

The team calculated the prevalence of chronic pain, endometriosis, anxiety, and depression during the study period and used statistical methods to assess the possible link between them.

The results showed that there was “an upward pattern” in the prevalence of chronic pain and an opposite pattern for endometriosis during these years. 

Patients who were most likely to experience anxiety were those who had both chronic pain and endometriosis.

The authors noted that because the database does not link patients' records over the years, it is not possible to establish any temporal link between endometriosis, chronic pain, anxiety, and depression.

Research Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37956828/