FEBRUARY 18, 2014

A BREAKTHROUGH IN A DISEASE THAT NO ONE LIKES TO TALK ABOUT

POSTED BY AMANDA SCHAFFER

" Over the years, Linda Griffith, a biological engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has undergone nine surgeries for endometriosis. In women with the disease, tissue that normally lines the uterus grows elsewhere in the body—for instance, on the ovaries, bladder, or bowel—often causing pain, infertility, or both. In early-stage cases, patients have small lesions, usually accompanied by inflammation; if the disease progresses, scar tissue may cause one organ to stick to another. The bladder might attach to the uterus, or the ovary might attach to the bowel. It’s “like someone poured superglue into the pelvis, and organs that normally are free to move around are, all of a sudden, just stuck,” Keith Isaacson, a gynecologist and surgeon at Newton-Wellesley Hospital, in Massachusetts, said. He operated several times on Griffith, a MacArthur fellowship recipient, and is now her scientific collaborator."

New York Times

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