Wanted: 1,000 women to help ‘get even’ with the agony of endometriosis

After battling endometriosis herself, a British entrepreneur backs 1m study hoping to improve understanding of the disease

Marie Macklin was on a Christmas shopping trip in Glasgow in 1997 when she collapsed in a store and was taken to hospital in severe pain. My dad arrived and I told him, I'm dying'," recalled the businesswoman and entrepreneur.

Macklin, then 32, turned out to be suffering from endometriosis, a disease in which cells similar to those that line the womb grow elsewhere in the body and can cause severe, chronic pain. The type affecting Macklin was ovarian endometriosis (sometimes referred to as chocolate cysts'). Macklin's cysts were bursting inside her.