ST. PAUL, Minn., June 11 (UPI) -- A suspected link between childhood trauma and the risk of developing endometriosis in later life was strengthened Wednesday with the publication of study that showed a greater chance of the condition among women with histories of difficult childhoods.
The study of hundreds of thousands of women in Sweden found those who as children experienced substance abuse, had a teenage or mentally ill parent, financial problems or a death in the family were linked to a 20% increased risk of an endometriosis diagnosis compared to women who had not been exposed.
However, the risk was much greater for girls exposed more than one of those factors, rising to 60%, while those who witnessed or were subjected to violence saw more than twice the risk of developing endometriosis later in life compared to women who had not been exposed, the Swedish authors reported.
The study published in the British medical journal Human Reproduction builds on earlier findings that women who experienced physical and sexual abuse as children had a 79% higher risk of developing the painful condition, which affects one in 10 reproductive-age women in the United States.
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