Abhishek Mahajan (narrator / author)

There are certainly improvements with the currently approved treatment plans, but the situation is a fair bit worse here than it is for HIV.

There is a long, long way to go for endometriosis to become a background chronic condition rather than one that continues to cause a lowering of quality of life even when treated.

Well, this all said, endometriosis isn't alone here.

Lots of diseases also have enormous, chronic impacts on quality of life and have little in the way of dependable treatment.

Cancer, of course, but also Alzheimer's, Crohn's disease, ALS, and so on.

But within this observation lies perhaps the most curious part of endometriosis.

Subheading There are few diseases on Earth as widespread and underfunded as it is.

One potential way to assess how overlooked and widespread a disease is is by considering the ratio of DALYs, or Disability Adjusted Life Years, to the amount of NIH funding.

Or, dollars.

DALYs.

The former is an indication of how institutional focus is being placed on the disease.

More money, the more attention.

There are obviously money sources outside of the NIH, but the NIH remains the single largest public funder of biomedical research in the world, at least for now, and its budget choices set the tone for scientific priorities across academia and industry.

The latter is an indicator of how severe and widespread the disease is, with a simple calculation.

DALY equals YLL plus YLD, where YLL, years of life lost, is years lost due to premature death and YLD, years lived with disability, is years lived while disabled.

Keep in mind that this is years across some given population, not in one person, which also gives an indication of how widespread the condition is.

Of course, DALYs are a limited metric given how subjective a disability is, but it's a helpful starting point.

Thus, if dollars.

DALYs is high, that implies that funding is either proportionate to suffering or is perhaps over-allocated to.

If it is low, the funding is almost certainly not enough.