Research and study results recently published by Dr. Brenda Eskenazi and colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley have shown that uterine fibroids are associated with pain during sexual intercourse (dyspareunia), but not with painful menstruation (dysmenorrhea).| Take Action |
Other causes of pelvic pain:
Ovarian cysts, which may need to be removed.
Endometriosis, where tissues from the uterus lining implant outside of the uterus.
Adenomyosis, which occurs when endometriosis grows into the wall of the uterus, causing it to become extremely tender.
Infection caused by chlamydia, gonorrhea, or other bacteria. |
The findings appeared in the December, 2003 journal of Fertility and Sterility, and were based on a study that collected data concerning the reproductive health of a group of 635 Italian women who resided near the site of a toxic chemical plant explosion in 1976. The study followed these women for the next 20 years, and found that fifteen percent of the women in the study suffered from uterine fibroids.
The women’s responses to questions about their reproductive health indicated that women with fibroids were over 2.8 times more likely to report moderate to severe dyspareunia and 2.6 times more likely to report moderate to severe noncyclic pelvic pain than women without fibroids. The number or size of the fibroids did not have a discernable relationship to pain symptoms. Also, reports of moderate to severe dysmenorrhea had no correlation to the presence of fibroids in the study group.
Dr. Eskenazi and her colleagues noted that the findings present a new development in the study of fibroid pain symptoms and raise the question of whether fibroid pain data gathered from women who seek reproductive health care can be regarded as an accurate indication of these symptoms in the population at large, or among non-care-seeking groups.
