A study of gene, protein and miRNA alterations in women with endometriosis

The aim of this thesis was to improve understanding of the underlying genetic and proteomic alterations potentially contributing to endometriosis. Assessment of the genetic mechanisms and pathways controlling angiogenesis, apoptosis and inflammation allowed identification of potential aberrations contributing to disease. Tissue miRNA expression experiments show that, the ebv-mir-BART2-5p is detected in endometriosis. Endometriosis cells contained higher levels of ebv-mir-BART2-5p compared to eutopic endometrium and this finding was confirmed by quantitative PCR. In situ hybridisation for EBV on tissue microarrays did not confirm the presence of active EBV within the endometriotic epithelial cells (Figure 4-24) but 5 of the 42 endometriotic samples on TMA-A gave a positive reading for EBV presence in some of the lymphocytes. PCR on the peripheral blood monocytes confirms overall higher levels of EBV DNA in the monocytes of people with endometriosis compared to controls (see Table 9-39 in the Appendix). There were no detected EBV levels in the surgically confirmed control patient samples. The presence of ebv-mir-BART2-5p is a permissive event for the development of endometriosis potentially acting as an initiator ... (continues)