Body size, adult height and endometriosis

Endometriosis is associated with lean body size during childhood, adolescence, and adulthood; tall total adult height; and tall sitting height, found researchers.

Key Points

Highlight:

• Endometriosis is associated with lean body size during childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.
• Furthermore, it is also associated with tall total adult height; and tall sitting height.

Importance:

• Previous studies have suggested an increasing risk for endometriosis with increasing adult height and an inverse association between adult body weight.
• Because endometriosis is present in early adolescence, it is unclear about whether adult anthropometric features are a cause or a consequence of endometriosis.
• The adolescent anthropometric measures related to endometriosis have shown conflicting results.

What's done here: 

• A case-control design within a prospective cohort of French women containing a total of 2416  surgically ascertained endometriosis cases among the 61 208 women studied.
• Self-administered questionnaires were used and the data updated every 2-3 years.

Key results:

• The endometriosis risk was lower among women who reported having a large versus lean body size at 8 years (P= 0.003), at menarche (P< 0.0001) and at ages 20-25 years (P< 0.0001).
• Women in the highest quartiles of height had a statistically significantly increased risk of endometriosis compared to those in the lowest(<158 cm).
• Also among women with a taller sitting height endometriosis risk was significantly higher.
• However, leg length was not statistically significantly associated with endometriosis.

Limitations:

• Only surgically confirmed endometriosis cases were involved, there may be some misclassified endometriosis cases in the control group.
• Body size measurements were based on retrospective self-report, may be subject to bias.
• Other parameters which are not measured may also have an impact.

Lay Summary

Endometriosis is associated with lean body size during childhood, adolescence, and adulthood; tall total adult height; and tall sitting height, found a study published in the scientific journal, Human Reproduction.

This study aimed to investigate the relationships between body size across the life course, adult height, components of adult height (sitting height and leg length) and endometriosis risk in a study of French women containing more than 60.000 women among which a total of 2416 surgically confirmed endometriosis cases were present.

They found that the endometriosis risk was lower among women who reported having a large versus lean body size at 8 years, at menarche and at ages 20-25 years. Furthermore, women in the highest quartiles of height had a statistically significantly increased risk of endometriosis compared to those in the lowest quartiles (<158 cm). Among women with a taller sitting height, endometriosis risk was significantly higher.

The authors concluded that the results of this study suggest that endometriosis is positively associated with lean body size across the life course and total adult height, but the components of height are associated should be investigated further.

Research Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28591798