Abstract
Background Autophagy is likely altered in patients with endometriosis. Ovarian steroid hormones seem to affect this changing of the autophagic process. Objective To study the effect of combined oral contraceptive (COC) pills on the expression of autophagic-related gene BECN1 and LC3B in the ectopic and eutopic endometria of patients with endometriosis. Material and Methods. The present quasiexperimental study recruited 36 women (18–45 years old) with endometrioma and nonendometrioma who were scheduled for surgery. Patients with endometrioma were randomly assigned to either a no-treatment group (n = 12) or a COC group (n = 12). The COC group was prescribed a daily oral pill composed of 3 mg drospirenone and 0.03 mg ethinyl estradiol for 6 weeks before surgery. The control group (n = 12) was composed of women without endometrioma. Ectopic endometriotic and endometrium tissues were collected from the no-treatment and COC groups, whereas the only endometrium was collected from the control group. These tissues were used for real-time PCR to measure the expression of the BECN1 and LC3B genes. Results The baseline demographic data were not different among the three groups. The BECN1 gene expression in endometrium tissue in the COC group was significantly less than that in the no-treatment and control groups (P = 0.011 and 0.029, respectively). No significant difference of endometriotic cyst BECN1 and LC3B gene expression was found between COC and no treatment. Conclusions Oral COC pills for 6 weeks continuously before surgery decreased the eutopic endometrial expression (mRNA) of the BECN1 gene compared to those from healthy normal women and nontreated patients with an endometriotic cyst. The change in the expression of autophagy-related genes was more distinct in eutopic than ectopic endometria. This trial is registered with TCTR20170720002. Registered and enrolled the first patient on 20 July 2017.
Highlights
The Beclin-1 and LC3 mRNA normalized by the geometric mean of the transcript level of β-actin and GAPDH are presented in Tables 3 and 4
Multiple comparison analysis demonstrated that endometrial Beclin-1 transcript from participants in the COC group was significantly lower than those in the notreatment group and control (P = 0:011 and 0.029, respectively) (Table 3)
No significant difference of endometriotic cyst Beclin-1 but not LC3B transcripts was found between the COC and no-treatment groups (Table 4)
Summary
To study the effect of combined oral contraceptive (COC) pills on the expression of autophagicrelated gene BECN1 and LC3B in the ectopic and eutopic endometria of patients with endometriosis. Ectopic endometriotic and endometrium tissues were collected from the no-treatment and COC groups, whereas the only endometrium was collected from the control group These tissues were used for real-time PCR to measure the expression of the BECN1 and LC3B genes. Oral COC pills for 6 weeks continuously before surgery decreased the eutopic endometrial expression (mRNA) of the BECN1 gene compared to those from healthy normal women and nontreated patients with an endometriotic cyst. The change in the expression of autophagy-related genes was more distinct in eutopic than ectopic endometria Registered and enrolled the first patient on 20 July 2017
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