Project description:Endometriosis is a common disease seen by gynecologists. Clinical features involve pelvic pain and unexplained infertility. Although endometriosis is pathologically characterized by endometrial tissue outside the normal uterine location, endometriosis is otherwise not easily explained. Endometriomas, endometriotic cysts of the ovary, typically cause pain and distortion of pelvic anatomy. To begin to understand the pathogenesis of endometriomas, we carried out transcriptome:microRNAome analysis of endometriomas and eutopic endometrium, using gene expression arrays and next generation small RNA sequencing technology. Keywords: two group comparison Patients undergoing surgery for endometriomas, suspected endometriosis, pelvic pain, abnormal uterine bleeding, pelvic organ prolapse, or uterine leiomyomas were approached for participation. After informed consent, the patients underwent scheduled surgical procedure. Tissues were collected either as cyst wall of endometrioma or endometrial curettage of hysterectomy specimen and placed directly into RNALater (Ambion, Austin, TX) and eventually frozen at -80?C. Samples were designated as endometriomas or non-endometriosis control endometrium based on surgical pathology reports. Total RNA was isolated from frozen tissue. High quality RNA was subjected to Illumina’s Human WG-6 version 2.0 BeadChips (Illumina). . *** This Series represents the transcriptome component of the study. ***
Project description:Endometriosis is a common disease seen by gynecologists. Clinical features involve pelvic pain and unexplained infertility. Although endometriosis is pathologically characterized by endometrial tissue outside the normal uterine location, endometriosis is otherwise not easily explained. Endometriomas, endometriotic cysts of the ovary, typically cause pain and distortion of pelvic anatomy. To begin to understand the pathogenesis of endometriomas, we carried out transcriptome:microRNAome analysis of endometriomas and eutopic endometrium, using gene expression arrays and next generation small RNA sequencing technology. Keywords: two group comparison
Project description:Mechanisms of immune dysregulation against established tumors are relatively well understood. Much less is known about the role of immune effectors against cancer precursor lesions. Endometrioid and clear cell ovarian tumors may partly derive from endometriosis, a commonly diagnosed chronic inflammatory disease. We performed here the most comprehensive immune gene expression analysis of pelvic inflammation in endometriosis and endometriosis-associated ovarian cancer (EAOC).
Project description:Endometriosis, an estrogen-dependent, progesterone-resistant, inflammatory disorder affects 10% of reproductive-age women. It is diagnosed and staged at surgery, resulting in an 11-year latency from symptom onset to diagnosis, underscoring the need for less invasive, less expensive approaches. Since the uterine lining (endometrium) in women with endometriosis has altered molecular profiles, we tested whether molecular classification of this tissue can distinguish and stage disease. We developed classifiers using genomic data from n=148 archived endometrial samples from women with endometriosis or without endometriosis (normal controls or with other common uterine/pelvic pathologies) across the menstrual cycle and evaluated their performance on independent sample sets. Classifiers were trained separately on samples in specific hormonal milieu, using margin tree classification, and accuracies were scored on independent validation samples. Classification of samples from women with endometriosis or no endometriosis involved two binary decisions each based on expression of specific genes. These first distinguished presence or absence of uterine/pelvic pathology and then no endometriosis from endometriosis, with the latter further classified according to severity (minimal/mild or moderate/severe). Best performing classifiers identified endometriosis with 90-100% accuracy, were cycle phase-specific or independent, and utilized relatively few genes to determine disease and severity. Differential gene expression and pathway analyses revealed immune activation, altered steroid and thyroid hormone signaling/metabolism and growth factor signaling in endometrium of women with endometriosis. Similar findings were observed with other disorders versus controls. Thus, classifier analysis of genomic data from endometrium can detect and stage pelvic endometriosis with high accuracy, dependent or independent of hormonal milieu. We propose that limited classifier candidate-genes are of high value in developing diagnostics and identifying therapeutic targets. Discovery of endometrial molecular differences in the presence of endometriosis and other uterine/pelvic pathologies raises the broader biological question of their impact on the steroid hormone response and normal functions of this tissue. We analyzed endometrial samples from n=148 women without or with endometriosis and/or other uterine/pelvic pathologies, using whole genome microarrays.
Project description:Endometriosis is one of the most common causes of chronic pelvic pain and infertility that affects 10% of women of reproductive age. It is currently defined as the presence of endometrial epithelial and stromal cells at ectopic sites; however, advances in endometriosis research have some authors believing that endometriosis should be re-defined as “a fibrotic condition in which endometrial stroma and epithelium can be identified”. microRNAs (miRNAs) are regulatory molecules that potentially play a role in endometriotic lesion development. There is evidence that suggests that miRNAs, including microRNA-21 (miR-21), participate in fibrotic processes in different organs, including the heart, kidney, liver and lungs. The objective of this study was to understand the role of miR-21 and the mechanisms that can contribute to the development of fibrosis by determining how IL-6 regulates miR-21 expression and how this miRNA regulates the transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β) signaling pathway to promote fibrosis. We investigated the expression of miR-21 in the baboon and mouse model of endometriosis and its correlation with fibrosis. We demonstrated that inflammation and fibrosis are present at a very early stage of endometriosis and that the inflammatory environment in the peritoneal cavity, which includes interleukin 6 (IL-6), can regulate the expression of miR-21 in vitro and in vivo.
Project description:Endometriosis is a benign disease affecting one in ten women of reproductive age worldwide. Although the pain level is not correlated to the extent of the disease it still is one of the cardinal symptoms strongly affecting the patients’ quality of life. Yet, a molecular mechanism leading to the formation of severe pain remains to be defined. Recent studies have indicated a close interaction between newly generated nerve cells and macrophages, leading to neurogenic inflammation in the pelvic area. In this context, the responsiveness of an endometriotic cell culture model was characterized upon inflammatory stimulation by employing a multi-omics approach, including proteomics and metabolomics. Differential proteomic profiling of the 12-Z endometriotic cell line treated with TNFα and IL1β unexpectedly showed that the inflammatory stimulation was able to induce a protein signature associated with neuroangiogenesis, specifically including neuropilins (NRP1/2). Untargeted metabolomic profiling in the same setup further revealed that the endometriotic cells were capable of the autonomous production of 7,8-dihydrobiopterin (BH2), 7,8-dihydroneopterin and epinephrine. These metabolites are related to the development of neuropathic pain and the former two were even up-regulated upon the inflammatory stimulation. Thus, the inflammatory stimulation of endometriotic 12-Z cells led to protein and metabolite expression changes that strongly suggest a direct involvement of epithelial cells in endometriosis pain development.
Project description:Mechanisms of immune dysregulation against established tumors are relatively well understood. Much less is known about the role of immune effectors against cancer precursor lesions. Endometrioid and clear cell ovarian tumors may partly derive from endometriosis, a commonly diagnosed chronic inflammatory disease. We performed here the most comprehensive immune gene expression analysis of pelvic inflammation in endometriosis and endometriosis-associated ovarian cancer (EAOC). RNA was extracted from 120 paraffin tissue blocks comprising of normal endometrium (n=32), benign endometriosis (n=30), atypical endometriosis (n=15) and EAOC (n=43). Serous tumors (n=15) were included as non-endometriosis associated controls. The immune microenvironment was profiled using Nanostring and the nCounter® GX Human Immunology Kit, comprising probes for a total of 511 immune genes. Please note that 3 normal endometrium samples did not pass the array quality filtering and therefore excluded in the data analyses.
Project description:Urinary chronic pelvic pain syndrome (UCPPS) is a condition of unknown etiology characterized by pelvic pain, and urinary frequency and/or urgency. As the proximal fluid of this disease, urine is an ideal candidate sample matrix for an unbiased study of UCPPS. In this study, a large, discovery-phase, TMT-based quantitative urinary proteomics analysis of 244 subjects was performed. The subjects included patients with UCPPS (n=82), healthy controls (HC) (n=94) and other chronic pain diseases, termed positive controls (PC) (n=68). Utilizing training and testing cohorts , we identified and validated a small and distinct set of proteins that distinguished UCPPS from HC (n=7) and UCPPS from PC (n=3). Validated UCPPS:HC proteins were predominantly ECM/ECM modifying or immunomodulatory/host defense in nature. Significantly,varying proteins in the UCPPS:HC comparison were overrepresented by members of several dysregulated biological processes including decreased immune cell migration, decreased development of epithelial tissue and increased bleeding. Comparison with the PC cohort enabled evaluation of UCPPS-specific upstream regulators, contrasting UCPPS with other conditions that cause chronic pain. Specific to UCPPS were alterations in the predicted signaling of several upstream regulators, including alpha-catenin, IL6, EGF and TGFB1, among others. These findings advance our knowledge of the etiology of UCPPS and inform potential future clinical translation into a diagnostic panel for UCPPS.
Project description:Endometriosis, defined as the presence of ectopic endometrial stroma and epithelium, affects approximately 10% of reproductive-age women and can cause pelvic pain and infertility. Endometriotic lesions are considered to be benign inflammatory lesions but have cancerlike features such as local invasion and resistance to apoptosis
Project description:Interstitial cystitis (IC) and bladder pain syndrome are terms used to describe a heterogenous chronic pelvic and bladder pain disorder of unknown etiology. The goal of this pilot study was to determine if gene expression profiling of bladder biopsy tissue from patients experiencing symptoms could be used to separate the patients based on some clinical parameter.