While several companies are working to develop one, there is no single blood test that can definitively diagnose endometriosis yet. It takes a long time to determine if a test has the reliability “so that no patients with actual endometriosis would be missed and no women without endometriosis would be selected for potentially unnecessary additional procedures” (Signorile & Baldi, 2018). Fassbender et al. (2015) notes that such tests might help receive a diagnosis more quickly so that “no women with endometriosis or other significant pelvic pathology are missed who might benefit from surgery for endometriosis associated pain and/or infertility”.
In our Diagnosis section, you can read more about some of the types of blood tests that are under investigation. Other blood tests can be used to rule out other problems and can give an indication to investigate further but are not specific to endometriosis (such as CRP and CA-125). You can also find information in the Diagnosis section about the use of ultrasounds and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI’s) in endometriosis.
“The gold standard for the diagnosis of peritoneal endometriosis has been visual inspection by laparoscopy followed by histological confirmation [7].However, the invasive nature of surgery, coupled with the lack of a laboratory biomarker for the disease, results in a mean latency of 7–11 years from onset of symptoms to definitive diagnosis. Unfortunately, the delay in diagnosis may have significant consequences in terms of disease progression. The discovery of a sufficiently sensitive and specific biomarker for the nonsurgical detection of endometriosis promises earlier diagnosis and prevention of deleterious sequelae and represents a clear research priority….The most important goal of the test is that no women with endometriosis or other significant pelvic pathology are missed who might benefit from surgery for endometriosis-associated pain and/or infertility [17–19].”
(Fassbender et al., 2015, para. 1, 5)