Diminished physical activity in women with endometriosis due to chronic pelvic pain

Endometriosis has a detrimental effect on functional capacity, muscle strength and mobility in women, compared to healthy women.

Key Points

Highlights:

• Women with endometriosis should be encouraged to have healthy lifestyles and regular sports activities to improve their functional capacity and quality of life.

Importance:

• The development of clinical strategies and appropriate counseling programs for improving decreased physical performance due to pelvic pain would be beneficial for women with endometriosis.

What’s done here?

• This cross-sectional study compares physical activity status between women with and without endometriosis.
• The study group consisted of clinically or surgically confirmed endometriosis patients and the control group consisted of healthy women with no suspicion of endometriosis.
• The handgrip strength, 6-min walk test, gait speed, and chair-stands test were used as dependent variables to validate the functional capacity.

Key results:

• A total of 115 women were included in the study, divided into two: the study (n=54) and control (n=61) groups.
• The two groups were similar in terms of education level, family income, and age at menarche.
• Following the adjustment of covariates, the endometriosis group showed significantly worse results regarding all physical performance tests.

Strengths and Limitations

• This is the first study investigating the association between physical performance and endometriosis using validated objective tests.
• The cross-sectional study design and recruitment of the participants from a specialized center are the limitations.
• Women having asymptomatic endometriosis or early stages of the disease could not be included in the study population.

Lay Summary

Endometriosis is a systemic, chronic, inflammatory disease defined as the localization of endometrial-like tissue outside the uterine cavity. Pelvic pain is the most common symptom in these women resulting in abstinence from school or work and psychosocial problems.

Physical activity is also impaired in these women as repeated experiences of intense pain causing central sensitization in the brain. Some modifications in their physical ability to perform physical tasks have been observed in endometriosis patients.

Researchers from Brazil, published a study titled “Are women with endometriosis more likely to experience reduced physical performance compared to women without the condition?” in the journal named Peer Journal, under the leadership of Dr.Micussi.

The authors aimed to investigate physical activity status in women with endometriosis compared to those without. They used several objective tests such as the handgrip strength, 6-min walk test, gait speed, and chair-stands test to determine physical performance. All these tests were significantly worse in the endometriosis group after the adjustment of confounding factors. Women with endometriosis had diminished grip strength, lower limb strength, mobility, and functional capacity.

 “Women with endometriosis should be encouraged to engage in physical exercise, adopt healthy lifestyle habits, and participate in activities aiming at pain control.”  the authors added.

Research Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38666082/