reproductive medicine Review Pathophysiological Basis of Endometriosis-Linked Stress Associated with Pain and Infertility: A Conceptual Review Debabrata Ghosh 1,* , Ludmila Filaretova 2, Juhi Bharti 3, Kallol K. Roy 3, Jai B. Sharma 3 1, and Jayasree Sengupta y 1 Laboratory of Molecular Physiology, Department of Physiology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi 110029, India;
[email protected] 2 Laboratory of Experimental Endocrinology, Pavlov Institute of Physiology, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg 199034, Russia; fi
[email protected] 3 Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi 110029, India;
[email protected] (J.B.);
[email protected] (K.K.R.);
[email protected] (J.B.S.) * Correspondence:
[email protected] Presently retired. y Received: 7 May 2020; Accepted: 3 June 2020; Published: 8 June 2020 Abstract: Women with endometriosis are often under stress due to the associated pain, infertility, inflammation-related and other comorbidities including cancer. Additionally, these women are also under stress due to taboos, myths, inter-personal troubles surrounding infertility and pain of the disease as well as due to frequent incidences of missed diagnosis and treatment recurrence. Often these women suffer from frustration and loss of valuable time in the prime phase of life. All these complexities integral to endometriosis posit a hyperstructure of integrative stress physiology with overt differentials in effective allostatic state in women with disease compared with disease-free women. In the present review, we aim to critically examine various aspects of pathophysiological basis of stress surrounding endometriosis with special emphasis on pain and subfertility that are known to affect the overall health and quality of life of women with the disease and promising pathophysiological basis for its effective management.