Global, regional, and national endometriosis trends from 1990 to 2017

Endometriosis is a chronic inflammatory disease defined as the presence of endometrial tissue outside the uterus that causes pelvic pain and infertility. We used the Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) 2017 to comprehensively analyze the burden of endometriosis between 1990 and 2017. DisMod‐MR 2.1 was used to estimate the incidence and prevalence in some countries/territories with sparse or absent data. Annual percent changes were calculated to quantify endometriosis burden estimate trends. Furthermore, the sociodemographic index (SDI) was used to assess the relationship between endometriosis burden estimates and development level. Between 1990 and 2017, endometriosis age‐standardized incidence and prevalence and years of life lived with disability (YLDs) decreased globally by 0.21% (95% confidence interval (CI): −0.23% to −0.20%), 0.29% (95% CI: −0.31% to −0.28%), and 0.28% (95% CI: −0.30% to −0.27%) per year, respectively. Apart from the high SDI quintiles with increasing trends of endometriosis incidence rate, prevalence rate, and YLDs, decreasing trends were observed in all SDI quintiles for all burden estimates. In conclusion, it appears that all endometriosis burden estimates have decreased globally between 1990 and 2017. However, these results are based on limited data and highlight the need for increased data collection on the incidence and prevalence of endometriosis. Our study uses the findings from the latest Global Burden of Disease Study 2017 update to present an up‐to‐date and comparative investigation on primary endometriosis incidence, prevalence, and years of life lived with disability for 195 countries or territories from 1990 to 2017, and to evaluate the association between these metrics of disease burden and the sociodemographic index level.