Fact or Myth? If you are a redhead, you are more likely to have endometriosis.

This one is tricky…. the answer is we’re still not sure.

witchiepo, a redhead, wrote on the now-defunct DailyStrength.org website that she was told “if you are a red head and have freckles you will have endo”.

I had heard this from a few others in the Endometriosis community, so I searched for medical studies to get a better understanding.

Back in 1995, there was a study to determine whether infertile red-headed women have an increased predisposition towards endometriosis. They studied 143 women having laparoscopy and laparotomy for infertility. Of the 143 women who had the surgery, 12 had natural red hair, and 10 of those 12 women were found to have endometriosis. That’s 83% of the redheaded population in that study.
In contrast, only 55 out of 131 non redheaded women (42%) were found to have endometriosis. So, in that study in 1995, it was concluded that “The results suggest an association between the occurrence of natural red hair and those factors that lead to the development of endometriosis.”

One year later, another study began, to reopen that case and study it again. In this much larger study, 90,065 women, “who had never been diagnosed with endometriosis, infertility, or cancer” made up the baseline and were followed for the next ten years. The study was published in 2006, showing that in ten years, “1,130 cases of laparoscopically confirmed endometriosis were reported among women with no past infertility.”

According to endometriosis.org, who reported on the study:

“Red hair colour was not tied to endometriosis in the overall analysis, which accounted for a variety of factors, such as parity (the number of times a woman has given birth) and body mass index. However, there was a suggestion that red hair colour slightly increased the risk of endometriosis among women who had never been infertile, but decreased the risk among those who were infertile.

“Further investigation into the potential linkage between red hair colour and coagulation or immune dysfunction may explain the observed difference in the association between hair colour and endometriosis with concurrent infertility vs. endometriosis without infertility,” the authors conclude.”