After she had her daughter four years ago, Dr Louise Collins switched her research focus from neurodegenerative diseases to endometriosis.
Her own involvement with the chronic disease and knowing it can be passed down injected some urgency into her research.
“My background is in chronic inflammatory diseases and specifically Parkinson’s disease, but in the last two years I’ve moved into the endometriosis research field,” she said.
“I have stage four endometriosis myself, and it kind of came home for me after I had my daughter, knowing that it’s genetic. I started looking into it, mostly from a personal viewpoint.”
The Cork woman was diagnosed with stage four endometriosis 10 years ago, although she had experienced symptoms since she was a teenager. At that stage, though, like many women who experience…