Abstract
Endometriosis, a disease affecting 3-10% of women of reproductive age, is characterized by the ectopic growth of endometrial tissue. Increasingly, endometriosis is also becoming recognized as a condition in which ectopic endometrial cells exhibit abnormal proliferative and apoptotic regulation in response to appropriate stimuli. Apoptosis plays a critical role in maintaining tissue homeostasis and represents a normal function to eliminate excess or dysfunctional cells. Accumulated evidence suggests that, in healthy women, endometrial cells expelled during menstruation do not survive in ectopic locations because of programmed cell death, while decreased apoptosis may lead to the ectopic survival and implantation of these cells, resulting in the development of endometriosis. Both the inability of endometrial cells to transmit a ‘death’ signal and the ability of endometrial cells to avoid cell death have been associated with increased expression of anti-apoptotic factors and decreased expression of pre-apoptotic factors. This paper is a review of the recent literature focused on the differential expression of apoptosis-associated molecules in the normal endometria of women without endometriosis, and in the eutopic and ectopic endometria of women with endometriosis. The role of apoptosis in the pathogenesis of endometriosis and the basic and clinical research on the treatment of endometriosis with apoptosis-inducing agents will be discussed.
Keywords: Endometriosis, apoptosis, proliferation, pathogenesis, medical treatment
Call for Papers in Thematic Issues
RARE CASES IN GYNECOLOGY-OBSTETRICS
With the development of diagnostic and therapeutic techniques (such as ART techniques) and the immersion of new pathologies (such as COVID19), we are witnessing an increase in the incidence of pathologies that were previously described as rare or exceptional. the practitioner sometimes confronts difficult situations in these cases in diagnostic ...read more
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