Abstract
Endometriosis is a disease that affects women of reproductive age and has a significantly negative impact on their well-being. The main symptoms are dysmenorrhoea, chronic pelvic pain and infertility. In many patients the diagnostic process is very long and can take up to 8–12 years. Laparoscopy, an invasive method, is still necessary to confirm the diagnosis. Therefore, development of more effective diagnostic markers appears to be of the utmost importance for early diagnosis of endometriosis and provision of appropriate treatment. From a clinical point of view, detection of early-stage endometriosis in asymptomatic patients is an ideal situation since early diagnosis of endometriosis may delay the onset of symptoms as well as prevent progression and complications. In the meantime, Cancer Antigen 125 (CA-125) is still the most frequently studied and used marker. Other glycoproteins, growth factors and immune markers seem to play an important role. However, the search for an ideal endometriosis marker is still underway. Further studies into the pathogenesis of endometriosis will help to identify biomarkers or sets of biomarkers with the potential to improve and speed up the diagnostic process in a non-invasive way.
Highlights
Endometriosis is a progressive disease with features of chronic inflammation
According to some scientific studies, there is a link between an inflammatory process and oxidative stress which may contribute to the development of endothelial dysfunction [4]
We focused on the main groups of markers which are: glycoproteins, growth factors, peptides, immunological markers, markers of oxidative stress, microRNAs and long non-coding RNAs (Figure 1)
Summary
Endometriosis is a progressive disease with features of chronic inflammation. It is still uncertain whether an inflammatory process is the cause or consequence in the pathogenesis of endometriosis [1,2,3]. We conducted a comprehensive literature review using electronic databases such as Pubmed, Science Direct and Google Scholar, and took into account articles published in English between 1988 and April 2021. Publications were selected if they related to the studies investigating potential biomarkers detected in women with endometriosis. The initial aim of this study was to identify potential novel diagnostic markers for the diagnosis of endometriosis, during the review process, it was suggested that the subject should be changed and urinary biomarkers and glycoproteins such as Cancer Antigen 125 (CA-125) were included
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