Hi, this is Flora Lichten, and you're listening to Science Friday. Today in the show, we're talking about a condition that many women have a story about.

Hi, this is Emily calling from Colorado. Hi, my name is Melissa. Hi, my name is Anna from Chicago. Bonnie from Madison, Wisconsin.

Ellen from Kate Cod.

And that story often goes something like this.

I spent about four years trying to get diagnosed.

I had a 10 year round with it before we found somebody who knew something about it.

I was diagnosed after suffering

for 20 years almost. It's an extremely common condition. If you have a uterus, you have a one in 10

chance of getting it. And yet, my symptoms were dismissed by my male gynecologist.

I feel like it took a long time for my OB to take me seriously.

It actually almost killed me.

We're talking about endometriosis, a painful disease that occurs

when endometrium-like tissue grows outside of the uterus.

What does the latest science tell us about the biology of the condition and how to treat it?

And why do so many people have such a difficult time getting diagnosed?

Here to answer these questions and more is Dr. Linda Griffith, who spent the last 15 years studying

endometriosis. She's a biological engineer and scientific director of the MIT Center for

Gyna pathology research based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Linda, welcome to Science Friday.

It's great to be here. Okay, How do you define endometriosis?

What's happening in the body and what are the symptoms?

So endometriosis is a disease where bits of tissue that resemble the endometrium are

growing throughout typically the abdominal cavity on the bowel and so on.

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