Peritoneal Fluid Cytokines Reveal New Insights of Endometriosis Subphenotypes

Jieliang Zhou, Bernard Su Min Chern, Peter Barton-Smith, Peter Barton‐Smith, Jessie Wai Leng Phoon, Tse Yeun Tan, Veronique Viardot-Foucault, Véronique Viardot-Foucault, Chee Wai Ku, Heng Hao Tan, Jerry Kok Yen Chan, Yie Hou Lee
International journal of molecular sciences · 2020 · vol. 21(10) , pp. 3515 · doi:10.3390/ijms21103515 · PMID:32429215 · PMC7278942 · W3025098861
article OA: gold CC0 ⤵ 41 in-corpus citations
📄 Open PDF View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-08 ⓘ

Peritoneal fluid cytokine profiling identified distinct signatures for superficial peritoneal, ovarian, and deep infiltrating endometriosis, revealing subphenotype-specific biological processes linked to angiogenesis and inflammation.

One-sentence paraphrase of the abstract; not a substitute for reading it. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

Endometriosis is a common inflammatory gynecological disorder which causes pelvic scarring, pain, and infertility, characterized by the implantation of endometrial-like lesions outside the uterus. The peritoneum, ovaries, and deep soft tissues are the commonly involved sites, and endometriotic lesions can be classified into three subphenotypes: superficial peritoneal endometriosis (PE), ovarian endometrioma (OE), and deep infiltrating endometriosis (DIE). In 132 women diagnosed laparoscopically with and without endometriosis (n = 73, 59 respectively), and stratified into PE, OE, and DIE, peritoneal fluids (PF) were characterized for 48 cytokines by using multiplex immunoassays. Partial-least-squares-regression analysis revealed distinct subphenotype cytokine signatures—a six-cytokine signature distinguishing PE from OE, a seven-cytokine signature distinguishing OE from DIE, and a six-cytokine-signature distinguishing PE from DIE—each associated with different patterns of biological processes, signaling events, and immunology. These signatures describe endometriosis better than disease stages (p < 0.0001). Pathway analysis revealed the association of ERK1 and 2, AKT, MAPK, and STAT4 linked to angiogenesis, cell proliferation, migration, and inflammation in the subphenotypes. These data shed new insights on the pathophysiology of endometriosis subphenotypes, with the potential to exploit the cytokine signatures to stratify endometriosis patients for targeted therapies and biomarker discovery.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

endometriosisdie_deep_infiltratingendometriomainfertility

MeSH descriptors

Cytokines Endometriosis Endometriosis Adult Cytokines Endometriosis Female Humans Least-Squares Analysis Middle Aged Phenotype Young Adult

Citation neighborhood

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.

References (84)

Cited by (43)

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-06-11T06:19:48.454388+00:00
openalex
last seen: 2026-06-10T17:14:06.276822+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-05-13T22:21:59.141895+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK