Dr. Pamela Stratton

Over the last 26 years, Dr. Stratton has conducted clinical studies in obstetrics and gynecology at the NIH.  She is currently on a writing sabbatical having retired from the Commissioned Corps of the US Public Health Service last summer.  Until last summer, Dr. Stratton was Chief of the Gynecology Consult Service at the NIH Clinical Center where she tackled urgent and important concerns impacting on the participation of women across all NIH clinical research protocols, balancing the health of women with the goals of their research studies. The complex patients and unique research setting of the NIH Clinical Center engendered innovative, translational gynecology research not found in other clinical research settings.

For the last 20 years, Dr. Stratton’s research has focused on improving the understanding and treatments for chronic pelvic pain associated with endometriosis.  When she began, clinical studies of the effectiveness of treating endometriosis-related pain focused on the effects of medical (hormonal) and surgical treatment of endometriosis lesions, despite the fact that how the lesions cause pain had not been determined.  As she gathered additional information and developed insight into the complex nature of endometriosis-associated pain, Dr. Stratton began to question the traditional focus on hormonal and surgical treatments. With a physiatrist, Dr. Jay Shah, Dr. Stratton has shown that women with pain associated with endometriosis have central sensitization and myofascial dysfunction, findings similar to those described by others in animal models. Sensitization means changes in the central nervous system and suggests why both hormonal manipulation and surgical removal of lesions (the current strategies for treating pain associated with endometriosis) are ineffective.  Dr. Stratton’s team also noted that women with chronic pelvic pain and endometriosis had an extremely high rate of migraine headache, another regional pain syndrome, suggesting that these pain syndromes may share a common pathophysiology.  Dr. Stratton and Dr. Barbara Karp are currently studying whether the use of botulinum toxin is an effective treatment of myofascial pain and sensitization in women with a history of endometriosis.