Insights into endometriosis symptom trajectories and assessment of surgical intervention outcomes using longitudinal
Katherine Edgley1, Philippa T K Saunders1, Lucy H R Whitaker1
1Centre for Reproductive Health, Institute for Regeneration and Repair, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
Abstract:
Endometriosis is a common, chronic condition associated with debilitating pain, fatigue, and heterogeneous symptom presentation. In this exploratory study, 68 participants with confirmed endometriosis were monitored for up to three 4-6-week smartwatch cycles. We collected daily self-reports of pain and fatigue as well as retrospective questionnaires assessing quality of life, and we extracted daily measures of physical activity (PA), sleep, and diurnal rhythms from wrist-worn actigraphy data. We found that daily PA was strongly negatively correlated with self-reported fatigue (repeated measures correlations ) and that participants with more severe or variable symptom trajectories displayed lower levels of PA, greater sleep disturbance, and more disrupted sleep and activity rhythms (Spearman's ). Lastly, we found evidence of sleep and PA changes following surgery for endometriosis that reflected change in self-reported symptoms. Collectively, our findings suggest that passive data collection using wrist-worn wearables in endometriosis could facilitate individualized objective insights into symptom trajectories.
