Abhishek Mahajan (narrator / author)

13 37ths, P equals 0.04.

KIS mutation was present in 27.6% of stage I cases, in comparison to 65% of stage II, 63% of stage III, and 58.1% of stage IV cases, P equals 0.02.

KIS mutation was also associated with greater surgical difficulty, ureterolysis, relative risk, RR equals 1.47, 95% confidence interval.

1.02 to 2.11, and non-Caucasian ethnicity, RR equals 0.64, 95% confidence interval.

0.47 to 0.89, pain severities did not differ based on KIS mutation status, at either baseline or follow-up.

Reoperation rates were low overall, occurring in 17.2% with KIS mutation compared with 10.3% without RR equals 1.66, 95% confidence interval, 0.66 to 4.21.

In conclusion, KIS mutations were associated with greater anatomic severity of endometriosis, resulting in increased surgical difficulty.

Somatic cancer driver mutations may inform a future molecular classification of endometriosis.

End quote.

Given all of this, it is worth wondering in what manner endometriosis is genuinely distinct from cancer.

Why don't we simply consider the two one and the same?

Is there some obvious dividing line between endometriosis and tumor that I have simply left out?

No.

There really is a striking level of similarity between the two.

Of course, I am not the first person to draw this connection between endometriosis and cancer, far from it.

One paper from 2017 titled Endometriosis.

benign, malignant, or something in between, had this to say.

Should endometriosis be considered a benign aneoplasm, which harbors oncogenic driver mutations, along with the capacity for invasion and potentially for distant metastasis?

Although exhibiting classic hallmarks of cancer, it is not lethal, is morphologically normal, and does not form an expansile tumor mass.

the recent findings invite us to revisit our notions of what constitutes cancer and should reignite interest in the biology of endometriosis, an entity which could aptly be described as a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.