A new trick for an old dog: The application of mifepristone in the treatment of adenomyosis

Xuan Che, Jianzhang Wang, Jiayi He, Qin Yu, Wenting Sun, Shuyi Chen, Gen Zou, Tiantian Li, Xinyue Guo, Xinmei Zhang
Journal of cellular and molecular medicine · 2019 · vol. 24(2) , pp. 1724–1737 · doi:10.1111/jcmm.14866 · PMID:31814282 · PMC6991631 · W2993077669
article OA: gold CC0 ⤵ 17 in-corpus citations
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⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-09 ⓘ

Mifepristone was investigated and found to inhibit adenomyosis cell proliferation, migration, and invasion, and to improve clinical symptoms, suggesting it as a potential therapeutic drug.

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Abstract

Adenomyosis is also called internal endometriosis and affects about 20% of reproductive-aged women. It seriously reduces life quality of patients because current drug therapies face with numerous challenges. Long-term clinical application of mifepristone exhibits wonderful therapeutic effects with mild side-effects in many disorders since 1982. Since adenomyosis is a refractory disease, we investigate whether mifepristone can be applied in the treatment of adenomyosis. In this study, we investigated the direct effects of mifepristone on human primary eutopic endometrial epithelial cells and stromal cells in adenomyosis. We found that mifepristone causes cell cycle arrest through inhibiting CDK1 and CDK2 expressions and induces cell apoptosis via the mitochondria-dependent signalling pathway in endometrial epithelial cells and stromal cells of adenomyosis. Furthermore, mifepristone inhibits the migration of endometrial epithelial cells and stromal cells through decreasing CXCR4 expression and restricts the invasion of endometrial epithelial cells via suppression of epithelial-mesenchymal transition in adenomyosis. We also found that mifepristone treatment decreases the uterine volume, CA125 concentration and increases the haemoglobin concentration in serum for adenomyosis patients. Therefore, we demonstrate that mifepristone could serve as a novel therapeutic drug in the treatment of adenomyosis, and therefore, the old dog can do a new trick.

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Condition tags

endometriosisadenomyosis

MeSH descriptors

Adenomyosis Mifepristone Adenomyosis Adenomyosis Adenomyosis Apoptosis Apoptosis Cell Cycle Checkpoints Cell Cycle Checkpoints Cell Movement Cell Movement Cell Survival Cell Survival Endometrium Endometrium Epithelial Cells Epithelial Cells Epithelial Cells Epithelial Cells Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition

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Papers in the corpus that this work cites (lower rings, blue) and that cite this one (upper rings, green). Dot size scales with the paper's in-corpus citation count — bigger dot = more influential within the endo/adeno field. Click a dot to open that paper. [ expand to 2 hops ] — adds papers reached through this work's immediate citers/citees. Heavier; up to 60 extra dots.

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