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User:LBird BASc/sandbox/ATK/Seminar6/Power/Power and Research on Endometriosis

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In general, “research on women's health is... neglected and it’s more difficult to find funding."[1]. A particular example of a disease that only biological women suffer from is endometriosis. It's a condition where endometrial tissue is present outside the ovary, leading to high levels of pain and sometimes infertility.[2] It affects a fairly large proportion of women, and the women it does affect, it affects greatly. Despite the fact that it has such an impact on women's lives, research is lacking, partly for reasons related to power.

Background

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10%-15% of women are affected by endometriosis[1]. In numbers of women, that means 89 million women worldwide are suffering from the disease.[2] Diagnosing the disease is difficult and the methods used are invasive.[3] The disease can also take between 7-10 years to diagnose, partly because of the methods used[3] and partly due to a general ignorance among doctors. Doctors have not been educated on the symptoms of endometriosis, the normal levels of pain for menstruation and the fact that women of all ages can suffer from endometriosis, not only middle-aged women.[2]

The lack of research is partly due to the complicated nature of the disease (for example, animal testing is not possible as there are few animals that menstruate[1]), and partly because it affects "only" women. The fact that it only affects women is reflected in the amount of funding allocated to research, which is no proportionate to its effect on women's lives.[4] The lack of education, on the other hand, is mainly a power issue. The choice has been made to not include the information necessary in the doctors' educations, or not place enough emphasis on it, leading to doctors with insufficient knowledge about menstruations and conditions related to it.

Current Research

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As a result of feminism increased influence on medical research, there has been a slight shift of power and therefore an increase in research on diseases like endometriosis.[5] Some results of that research include:

  • A new pain medication which stops the production of estrogen. However, this has the side-effects equivalent to menopause (regardless of age)[3]
  • New methods for treating endometriosis:
    • Using iPS (induced pluripotent stem cells) to create healthy uterine cells and replacing the unhealthy ones with these.[6] More research is required to determine if it will work and to identify potential side-effects.
    • Supplying sufferers with the gene Let-7b, since this gene is suppressed when suffering from endometriosis.[7] This also needs more research to determine if it would be a viable option for humans.

References

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  1. ↑ a b c Lund, Annika. (2016). "How menstruation affects women's health". Medicinsk Vetenskap, 4. https://ki.se/en/research/how-menstruation-affects-womens-health
  2. ↑ a b c Ellin, Abby. (March 30, 2015). "Endometriosis Is Often Ignored in Teenage Girls". The New York Timeshttps://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/30/endometriosis-is-often-ignored-in-teenage-girls/?_r=0
  3. ↑ a b c Donelly, Christina. (Feb 22, 2019). "The Latest Research on Endometriosis: What You Need to Know" https://www.healthline.com/health/endometriosis/latest-endo-research
  4. ↑ Rogers PA, D'Hooghe TM, Fazleabas A, et al. Priorities for endometriosis research: recommendations from an international consensus workshop. Reprod Sci. 2009;16(4):335–346. doi:10.1177/1933719108330568
  5. ↑ Schiebinger, Londa. (2000). Has Feminism Changed Science? Signs,25(4), 1171-1175. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3175507
  6. ↑ Kaoru Miyazaki, Matthew T. Dyson, John S. Coon V, Yuichi Furukawa, Bahar D. Yilmaz, Tetsuo Maruyama, Serdar E. Bulun. (Nov 13, 2018)."Generation of Progesterone-Responsive Endometrial Stromal Fibroblasts from Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells: Role of the WNT/CTNNB1 Pathway". Stem Cell Reports Volume 11, Issue 5, 1136-1155. https://www.cell.com/stem-cell-reports/pdfExtended/S2213-6711(18)30425-9
  7. ↑ Sahin, C,  Mamillapalli, R,  Yi, KW,  Taylor, HS. (July 31, 2018) "microRNA Let‐7b: A Novel treatment for endometriosis". J Cell Mol Med. 5346– 5353. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcmm.13807
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