Early Testing for Endometriosis: Brenda Krishnacoumar Wants to Buy Women Time
Dr Brenda Krishnacoumar wants to replace the laparoscope, an instrument used to perform a laparoscopy, with a blood test. For her presentation at Postdoc Pitch Day, she recreated the instrument using a 3D printer, among other things.
Sharp pain, chronic inflammation and infertility – these are just a few examples of what endometriosis can do. It is a chronic disease in which tissue similar to the uterine lining attaches to organs outside the uterus. Endometriosis is insidious, because the symptoms are multifaceted and often ambiguous. As a result, the path to diagnosis is often an odyssey. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), some 190 million women worldwide suffer from endometriosis, and it can take up to ten years to diagnose the disease. This is a long time during which the quality of life deteriorates, and it can also represent a valuable window of time that may be lost by women who wish to have children. Dr Brenda Krishnacoumar wants to change that. During the first Postdoc Pitch Day at ISAS in October 2021, she presented the approach by which she hopes to buy women time with her research into the incurable disease (S. 54).
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ANNUAL REPORT 2021
