Overexpression of STAT3 gene in women with endometriosis

Background: Endometriosis is an inflammatory disease that characterized as the growth of the endometrial tissue outside the uterine cavity. It has shown that inflammation plays important role in pathogenesis of endometriosis. Several studies revealed that different cytokines and chemokines which involved in inflammation and angiogenesis are increased in endometriosis. One of these cytokines is interleukin- 6 (IL-6) which is increased in endometrial tissue and peritoneal fluid of women with endometriosis. Another one is IL-17 which is shown its increase in peritoneal fluid of patients with endometriosis. Signal transducers and activators of transcription3 (STAT3) is a transcription factor which is activated by some cytokines signaling pathways such as IL-6 signaling. On the other hand, STAT3 as a transcription factor influences on expression of some genes such as IL-17.Objective: The objective of this study was to investigate the gene expression of STAT3 in endometrial tissues of women with endometriosis compared to control ones.Materials and Methods: In this case control study, 20 women with endometriosis and 20 women without endometriosis were enrolled after laparoscopy as endometriosis and control groups, respectively. Ectopic endometrial samples were obtained through laparoscopic procedure while eutopic and control endometrial tissues were obtained by pipelle. The mRNA expression of STAT3 in control, eutopic and ectopic endometrial samples were quantitatively evaluated by real time polymerase chain reaction (real time PCR). Gene expression data were analyzed based on 2-ΔΔct to estimate the relative fold change values. Data were analyzed by one-way ANOVA followed by Tukey’s test.P value less than 0.05 was considered as statistically significant.Results: The findings showed that mRNA expression of STAT3 was statistically increased in ectopic tissues of endometriosis women compared to control and eutopic endometrial samples (p<0.05). In addition, mRNA expression of STAT3 was increased in eutopic endometrial tissues of endometriosis group compared to control endometrial samples but this difference was not statistically significant (p> 0.05).Conclusion: Regarding to the results of this study, it seems that overexpression of STAT3 gene in endometriotic tissues of women with endometriosis may be involved in pathogenesis of endometriosis. For getting more information, we need to study this gene in a large number of women with and without endometriosis and also to investigate gene expression of other factors involved in signaling pathways of inflammatory cytokines. Epigenetic studies such as STAT3 binding to the promoter regions of target genes such as IL17 are recommended.

کلیدواژه ها:

Endometriosis ، STAT3 ، Ectopic ، Eutopic ، Endometrium