Endometriosis treatments: what about Aromatase Inhibitors!?

[Penelopeel]

I am going to list the basic treatments for endometriosis and then mention one that you could ask your doctor about.

1 . The basics: take the pill continuously

,Take progesterone continuously eg Prometrium

2. Chop it all out ( seems to bounce right back!) don’t just burn it Excize it.

3. Zoladex and those GNRH analogs that turn off your natural hormones and put you into menopause.

4. Radical surgery removing ovaries and uterus. If you just remove the uterus and you leave the Ovaries then the ovaries make oestrogen and the endo spots elsewhere in the pelvis could keep being a problem.

5. AROMATASE INHIBITORS!!! Bet no one has told you about them!!!!! But they are meant to work well for endo limited clinical studies. No drug company has pushed for them to be used that way but they work really well. They have beeen used for a long time in breast cancer patients and in the future will be used to reduce breast cancer risk in women at high risk. So before your doctor cuts out your uterus and ovaries ask then if you could try an aromatase inhibitor please. They can be combined with the pill or Prometrium to suppress any hot flushes you get. Anyway they will be the drug of the future. They are around and being used for other indications ask your clever doctor if you could try it. You may have to buy it privately. Look it up. I feel we need to push for these drugs for endometriosis. Everyone is suffering so much it really is terrible.

I found this on the website endometriosis.org

Aromatase in endometriosis

BY PROFESSOR SERDAR BULUN (USA) AND ROS WOOD (AUSTRALIA)

Recently, a few gynaecologists have begun prescribing aromatase inhibitors for women with endometriosis, who have not had success with other treatments or who cannot use other treatments because of their side effects.

Three published phase II (pilot) studies have shown that aromatase inhibitors are effective in the medical treatment of endometriosis. However, a total of only 65 patients were included in these studies.

Although the use of aromatase inhibitors is new in endometriosis, they have been used to treat post-menopausal women with some forms of breast cancer for nearly 10 years. In fact, aromatase inhibitors are currenly the most effective nontoxic drugs for the treatment of postmenopausal breast cancer.

At the moment, the treatment of endometriosis with aromatase inhibitors is still experimental, because the research is still in its early days. Thus far, a phase III study that may lead to approval of their use for the treatment of endometriosis by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), or an equivalent institution,

Have a look on their website for the whole article.