How long does it take to detect endometriosis? How urgent is the diagnosis of endometriosis?
Endometriosis is a disease that affects 1 in 10 women. In addition to being a very painful, disabling disease, the medical wandering surrounding this illness means that it takes an average of 8 to 12 years between the appearance of the first symptoms and the diagnosis of endometriosis. It's a disease that is little known to primary care healthcare professionals. There are as many types of endometriosis as there are menstruating women. The disease is multifactorial and polymorphic (symptoms differ from person to person), which makes it very difficult to diagnose.
Another major problem is that the methods available today (i.e. clinical examinations, imaging and biological sampling) do not provide a definitive diagnosis. Some forms of endometriosis can be detected, but not all.
Today, laparoscopy is the reference examination for endometriosis. But the problem is that it's an invasive examination, which has to be performed under general anaesthetic.
For a definition of endometriosis, its causes and diagnosis, read our blog article here.
In recent years, the challenge has been to develop a non-invasive test. To achieve this, a French company has come up with a major innovation that will revolutionize disease detection: hundreds of potential biomarkers have been analyzed.
The endotest, a diagnosis that eliminates any delay in diagnosing endometriosis?
In January 2021, a team of endometriosis doctors and artificial intelligence engineers (from start-up Ziwig) launched the Endo-miRNA clinical trial. The test is based on the simultaneous acquisition of data relating to millions of DNA or RNA fragments, which will be analyzed by artificial intelligence to identify a powerful and reliable endometriosis signature.
With the Endo-miRNA clinical trial, researchers were able to distinguish between patients with endometriosis and those without.
The result is a worldwide innovation: Ziwig's Endotest saliva test.
It's a revolution and a huge advance in the management of endometriosis: the saliva test will reduce the average diagnosis time from 8 years to just a few days. This will limit the number of doctors' wanderings, enable early treatment of endometriosis and slow down or even halt the worsening of pain and other symptoms, thus improving patients' quality of life.
But that's not all: the Ziwig Endotest will help to avoid unnecessary surgical procedures (such as diagnostic laparoscopy), which were previously necessary for patients with symptoms similar to those of the disease, but who were not carriers.
Overall, in the long term, the medical and social costs of the disease should be reduced. With the arrival of this test on the market, patients living in medical deserts will be able to benefit from reliable, early diagnosis.
What's more, the test is very easy to use, as women themselves take the saliva sample at home using a self-sampling kit. All they have to do is return the kit to the laboratory, which will confirm or refute the diagnosis of endometriosis. The test is close to 100% accurate.
This innovation is a huge step forward for all women suffering from endometriosis. It's a major step forward for women's health.
When you buy our menstrual panties, you're contributing to endometriosis research, since 10% of our profits are donated to endometriosis research associations.
Source: Endomind
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