The research could improve how endometriosis is diagnosed and, ultimately, how it is treated; and it paints the sharpest portrait yet of a condition that is as mysterious as it is prevalent.

The study, which appeared in Cell Reports Medicine, used computational methods developed at UCSF to analyze anonymized patient records collected at the University of California’s six health centers.

“We now have both the tools and the data to make a difference for the huge population that suffers from endometriosis,” said Marina Sirota, Ph.D., the interim director of the UCSF Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute (BCHSI), professor of pediatrics, and senior author of the paper. “We hope this can spur a sea change in how we approach this disorder.”