Project description:The onset of menopause is accompanied by a dramatic increase in reported symptoms of vaginal dryness, soreness, irritation or itching, pain with intercourse and bleeding after intercourse. Collectively these affect 25-50% of women of post-menopausal age and significantly impact their quality of life. To examine how gene expression differs between these groups, surface vaginal epithelial cells were collected from postmenopausal women suffering from vaginal dryness and appropriate controls not suffering from dryness. Affymetrix GeneChip Human 1.0 ST microarrays were performed on RNA isolated from ten participants.
Project description:The onset of menopause is accompanied by a dramatic increase in reported symptoms of vaginal dryness, soreness, irritation or itching, pain with intercourse and bleeding after intercourse. Collectively these affect 25-50% of women of post-menopausal age and significantly impact their quality of life. To examine how gene expression differs between these groups, surface vaginal epithelial cells were collected from postmenopausal women suffering from vaginal dryness and appropriate controls not suffering from dryness. Affymetrix GeneChip Human 1.0 ST microarrays were performed on RNA isolated from ten participants. Suitable RNA was extracted from ten participants which were classified into two groups, the dryness and control groups, based on diagnosis of dryness by a nurse during gynecoligical examination.
Project description:Why ~70% of women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) have intrinsic insulin resistance (IR), above and beyond that associated with body mass, including dysfunctional glucose metabolism in adipose tissue (AT), remains a fundamental question. In these experiments, we sought to explore the role of miRNAs in the AT of PCOS and matched controls. Analysis determined that PCOS AT has a differentially expressed miRNA profile, including upregulated miR-93. We observed a significant association between HOMA-IR, and GLUT4 and miR-93 expression in human AT. Our results point to a novel mechanism for regulating insulin-stimulated glucose uptake via miR-93, and demonstrate upregulated miR-93 expression in PCOS, possibly accounting for the IR of the syndrome, and also in non-PCOS women with IR. We performed miRNA microarrays to determine PCOS-related miRNA expression in adipose derived from lean PCOS patients and matched control women. We analyized miRNA from total RNA extracted from subcutaneous (sc) adipose tissue from three lean PCOS patients and three matched control women.
Project description:Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is the most common endocrinological disorder of fertile-aged women. PCOS has been associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes and abnormalities of the placenta. By taking a quantitative label-free quantitative proteomics approach we set out to investigate if changes in the plasma proteome of pregnant women with PCOS could elucidate the mechanisms behind the pathologies observed in PCOS pregnancies. We have performed label-free quantitative proteomics on plasma samples from pregnant women with PCOS at term (n=14) and plasma samples from pregnant control women (n = 23) matched for age, gestational length and BMI. The samples are derived from BASIC pregnancy cohort from Uppsala, Sweden. A total of 169 proteins with two or more unique peptides were identified.
Project description:Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is an endocrine and metabolic disorder affecting women of reproductive age. The main features of PCOS are hyperandrogenism and irregular menstrual cycles together with metabolic dysfunctions including abdominal obesity, dyslipidemia and an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Despite the high prevalence of >15%, the pathophysiology of the syndrome is unclear. Gene expression array data from skeletal muscle and adipose tissue have provided some information about dysregulated metabolic pathways in women with PCOS, but the transcriptomic data need to be verified by proteomics to advance our understanding of PCOS. Skeletal muscle and adipose tissue biopsies from 10 women with PCOS and 10 controls were subjected to global proteomic analysis. Protein expression differences between cases and controls were based on Student’s t-test and corrected for multiple testing. In total, we identified 5000 proteins in adipose tissue and 3480 proteins in skeletal muscle. After correction for multiple testing, 74 proteins with q < 0.05 corresponding to 72 unique proteins were found to be differentially expressed in adipose tissue from women with PCOS versus controls. And, 123 proteins with q < 0.05 corresponding to 120 unique proteins were found to be differentially expressed in skeletal muscle from women with PCOS versus control. We then applied pathway analysis to the total protein and phosphopeptide data using PRISM and Enrichr.
Project description:Why ~70% of women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) have intrinsic insulin resistance (IR), above and beyond that associated with body mass, including dysfunctional glucose metabolism in adipose tissue (AT), remains a fundamental question. In these experiments, we sought to explore the role of miRNAs in the AT of PCOS and matched controls. Analysis determined that PCOS AT has a differentially expressed miRNA profile, including upregulated miR-93. We observed a significant association between HOMA-IR, and GLUT4 and miR-93 expression in human AT. Our results point to a novel mechanism for regulating insulin-stimulated glucose uptake via miR-93, and demonstrate upregulated miR-93 expression in PCOS, possibly accounting for the IR of the syndrome, and also in non-PCOS women with IR. We performed miRNA microarrays to determine PCOS-related miRNA expression in adipose derived from lean PCOS patients and matched control women.