Abhishek Mahajan (narrator / author)

This is obviously a fuzzy metric, since research doesn't necessarily go faster just because you throw more money at it, but it is helpful as a data point.

To keep things consistent, let's work at the order of millions of dollars and dalleys per 100k people, since that is how they both are typically reported.

Let's also focus on chronic conditions, since that is where DALYs are most relevant.

Finally, we can pull NIH funding numbers from here and find the DALY counts from review papers.

On the highest end, Alzheimer's received $3,538 million in funding in 2023 and caused 451 DALYs per 100k people worldwide.

so 3538 colon for 51, or 7.8.

Then Crohn's disease, which has the ratio 92 to 20.97, for 0.3.

Slightly lower is diabetes, 1187 colon 801.5, 1.4.

Close to it is epilepsy, 245 colon 177.84, 1.6.

Finally, near the bottom of the list is endometriosis, 29 minutes and 56.61 seconds, or 0.5.

Quite bad.

That said, endometriosis isn't alone in being deeply underfunded.

Another condition with an even worse ratio is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, COPD, which lies at 148 to 926.1, or 0.15.

Why COPD?

mostly given its stigma as a self-inflicted disease.

But there is some reason to believe that the true ratio for endometriosis is even worse than what they appear to be on face value.

Why?

Diagnosis lag.

Endometriosis takes, on average, 7 to 10 years to be diagnosed after symptom onset.

This is not due to the subtlety of the condition.