Giuseppe Benagiano

INTRODUCTION: Several selective progesterone receptor modulators (SPRMs) show promise in several areas of medicine and this work has been summarized by us in 2008. AREAS COVERED: Since the publication of our reviews, several developments h…

A dispute has recently emerged whether early descriptions exist of the condition we name endometriosis. A first question is: 'Who identified endometriosis?' To respond, two non-complementary methods have been employed: searching for ancient…

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: We adopted a life-cycle approach to further our understanding of the natural history of the cystic forms of uterine adenomyosis first described by Cullen in 1908. SEARCH STRATEGY: Scopus and PubMed were searched for all …

There are now convincing data showing that cystectomy of the endometrioma is not only no cure of infertility, but may harm follicle reserve. The question arises why is cystectomy for an endometrioma, in contrast with other -benign cysts, a …

To improve the still fragmented understanding of endometriosis, a life cycle approach was adopted that revealed unexpected aspects of the natural history of the disease throughout a woman's life. Three age-related stages of endometriosis ar…

Endometriosis in the adolescent has, in recent years, been discovered to be a challenging problem in gynaecology. Although the pain may start at a young age, even before the onset of menstruation, the diagnosis by laparoscopy is almost alwa…

Adverse living and nutritional conditions in utero and in early infancy may influence the risk of diseases in adult life, because fetal growth seems determined by interactions between the environment and the fetal genome and these interacti…

We elaborate on a new theory to explain pelvic endometriosis, including endometriosis in premenarcheal girls, based on the finding that the neonatal endometrium can display secretory activity immediately after birth and, in some cases, chan…

Present management of the ovarian endometrioma focuses on the size of the cyst and dictates that surgery should not be performed unless this exceeds 3 cm, which neglects the complex pathology of this condition. Studies of ovaries with the e…

BACKGROUND Adenomyosis and endometriosis were initially described as 'adenomyoma'. When the retrograde menstruation theory became widely accepted to explain the pathogenesis of endometriosis, since it does not explain adenomyosis, the two c…

Today an accurate diagnosis of adenomyosis can be made thanks to progress in imaging techniques: sonography and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). This has made it possible to clinically correlate the presence of adenomyosis to infertility. …

Endometriosis and adenomyosis are characterized by the presence of ectopic endometrium, but are also associated with functional and structural changes in the eutopic endometrium and inner myometrium. Alterations in the inner myometrium occu…

Bleeding from endometriotic implants is now an established cause of acute hemoperitoneum in pregnancy. However, the adverse impact of pelvic endometriosis on uterine function before conception may also interfere with subsequent deep placent…

Eutopic and ectopic endometria of women with adenomyosis show a series of metabolic and molecular abnormalities that increase angiogenesis and proliferation, decrease apoptosis, allow local production of estrogens, create progesterone resis…

The eutopic endometrium in women suffering from endometriosis is different in many ways from that of healthy controls. Both proliferative and secretory eutopic endometria exhibit changes in endometriosis with heterogeneous responses. In add…

The diagnosis of adenomyosis using noninvasive techniques such as vaginal ultrasounds and magnetic resonance has clear clinical applications and has renewed the interest in the pathogenesis of uterine adenomyosis. However, the research rema…

The identification of endometriosis has been a subject of intense debate over the last decade. There is, however, no doubt that Thomas Cullen was the first to describe endometriosis and adenomyosis as one disease characterized by the presen…

The process of identifying the presence of epithelial invasions in the peritoneal cavity, but outside the uterine cavity, proceeded in steps over a period of 60 years until, in 1920, Cullen established that uterine adenomyoma, ovarian and d…

Classically, the diagnosis of adenomyosis has only been possible on a hysterectomy specimen, usually in women in their late fourth and fifth decades, and, therefore, evaluating any relationship with infertility was simply not possible. As a…