endocare@wrh.ox.ac.uk

Endometriosis results in severe pelvic pain and reduced fertility for millions of women worldwide. Endometriosis CaRe Oxford is a nationally and internationally acclaimed Centre of Expertise in clinical Care and Research into Endometriosis, part of the Nuffield Department of Women's and Reproductive Health at the University of Oxford. Our research seeks to identify what causes this disease to help improve our understanding of its different forms and to help inform novel drug and non-invasive biomarker discovery programmes.

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World Congress on Endometriosis

It's another great day for our EndoCaRe research group, who are exhibiting at the 15th World Congress on Endometriosis in Edinburgh. Posters galore! 📢 How many treatments do people with chronic pelvic pain try? 📢 What factors influence sexual pain? 📢 Menstrual product advertising in social media: tensions and inconsistencies and lots more!

Multiple Debilitating Pains

A new global study shows the experience of Endometriosis is rooted in a person’s genetics. Researchers at the Nuffield Department of Women’s & Reproductive Health and the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics at the University of Oxford, collaborated with 25 teams across the world. Their study revealed compelling evidence of a shared genetic basis for endometriosis and other types of pain seemingly unrelated to endometriosis, including migraine, back pain and multi-site pain.

New imaging study could make diagnosing endometriosis quicker

A new research study launches to investigate whether a 20-minute imaging scan can detect the most common types of endometriosis, which currently require surgery to diagnose.

Genetic Molecular Epidemiological Studies

One of our key areas of research is to uncover the causes and subtypes of endometriosis through large-scale genetic and molecular epidemiological studies. Genetic (heritable) factors are known to play a role in endometriosis, and – through collaborative studies involving thousands of women – we have led global research identifying DNA variants in the genome that are associated with disease risk. Current work involves understanding the biological mechanisms through which these DNA variants act, and expanding our world-wide genetic studies to find more risk variants.

Listen now to the first episode ‘Unheard of – The hidden voice of endometriosis.’ A bold new podcast series co-hosted by DPhil students Danielle Perro and Magda Mareckova, it seeks answers to the biggest questions posed by the Endometriosis community. The focus is learning more about the condition while elevating the voices that often go unheard – the voices of people with endometriosis and early-career specialists & researchers in the field.

Listen to Endometriosis podcast: "Unheard of"

Listen now to ‘Unheard of – The hidden voice of endometriosis.’ A bold new podcast series co-hosted by DPhil students Danielle Perro and Magda Mareckova, it seeks answers to the biggest questions posed by the Endometriosis community. The focus is learning more about the condition while elevating the voices that often go unheard – the voices of people with endometriosis and early-career specialists & researchers in the field.

Endometriosis: pandemic backlog risks making it even harder for women to get help

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a disproportionate and devastating impact on women’s health, according to a report from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

Oxford Sparks Podcast

Did you know there are different types of pain? In this episode of the Big Questions Podcast, we chat to Dr Lydia Coxon, a researcher in the Nuffield Department of Women’s and Reproductive Health at Oxford. Lydia is looking at the mechanisms that cause pain in patients with endometriosis and how can we improve treatment.

Pain in Women

How endometriosis generates pain is still poorly understood. A key focus of our work is to combine brain imaging techniques with clinical data, including detailed pain assessments, hormone measures and the results of surgery, to try to better understand the relationship between endometriosis and pain, and incorporate this knowledge into better targeted treatments as well as improve the way clinical trials for endometriosis-associated pain are designed.

Treatment

Laparoscopy (an abdominal endoscopic procedure to visualise disease) remains the gold standard for diagnosing of endometriosis, but it is an invasive procedure that can only be performed by gynaecologists, often causing substantial delays in diagnosis and treatment of the disease. With our integrated endometriosis research programme we hope to be able to re-classify the disease using a combination of biological and clinical parameters, to discover new, non-invasive biomarkers and to identify novel targets for more individualised treatments.

World Leading Research

Endometriosis research has been well established over many years in the Nuffield Department of Women's & Reproductive Health. With our integrated endometriosis research programme we hope to be able to re-classify the disease using a combination of biological and clinical parameters, to discover new, non-invasive biomarkers and to identify novel targets for more individualised treatments.

MISSION

We aim to to provide evidence-based, patient-focussed care of the highest quality and conduct groundbreaking clinical and scientific research.

Clinicians in Theatre at the EndoCaRe Centre.

PATIENTS

A weekly specialised Endometriosis Clinic runs every Monday afternoon in the outpatient area on Level 1 of the Women’s Centre at John Radcliffe Hospital.

Clinician meeting with a patient at the EndoCaRe Centre.

RESEARCH

Our research focuses on improving the understanding of endometriosis, working towards non-surgical methods of diagnosis and identifying better treatments.

Researchers at work in the lab at the EndoCaRe Centre.

EDUCATION

The Endometrosis CaRe Centre provides education and training for clinical and research students with a particular focus on postgraduates (MSc and DPhil).

Lecture being held at the EndoCaRe Centre.

PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT

Staff and students in the EndoCaRe Centre regularly do outreach and engagement work in schools and the local community to improve the public's understanding of endometriosis and related issues and offer support to those affected by the disease. Click here to find out more about the Centre's media coverage and the outreach work we do.

BRC Open Day

DPhil students from our Endometriosis research group, delivered a thought provoking and popular workshop to year 7 and 8 students at the Cheney School in Oxford, as part of a "Future of Genetics" Day. The aim was to inspire the next generation of scientists on how research utilises “future technology” single-cell RNA-sequencing for studying endometriosis.

WATCH VIDEO

Learn more about the symptoms, treatment and support for endometriosis by watching this short video from endometriosis.org.

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Our Team

Our team includes research groups led by professors Krina Zondervan, Christian Becker and Katy Vincent. Their work focuses on understanding the causes of endometriosis and subtypes of disease, its relation to symptomatology including pelvic pain, and identification of novel non-invasive diagnostic markers and treatments. Dr Karin Hellner is Senior Fellow in women's health and Consultant Gynaecologist and Colposcopist. Dr. Nilufer Rahmioglu is a Senior Research Scientist from the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics, at the Nuffield Department of Medicine.

Click here to see our full team of research midwives and nurses, researchers, support staff, and students.

Krina Zondervan

Head of Department, Professor of Reproductive & Genomic Epidemiology, Co-Director Endometriosis CaRe Centre.

krina.zondervan@wrh.ox.ac.uk

+44 (0)1865 740382 / 221003 (PA)