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The societal problem of sexual abuse occurs all too frequently, with an estimated 16% of adult men and 25% of women reporting that as children they had experienced sexual abuse. Such childhood experiences have well-documented psychiatric and neurobiological sequelae and may be important in understanding somatic disorders. These researchers report results from a meta-analysis of 23 studies that included 4640 subjects and focused on seven common somatic disorders with often obscure etiologies (functional gastrointestinal disorders, chronic headache, psychogenic seizure, fibromyalgia, obesity, chronic pain, and chronic pelvic pain). Of the 23 studies, 16 included only women.
Results indicated that childhood sexual abuse was significantly associ…