Effects of endometrial and oviductal epithelial cells of endometriosis on mouse embryonic development in vitro

Objective: To investigate the effects of oviductal epithelial cells and eutopic endometrium from the patients with endometriosis on mouse embryonic growth in vitro. Methods: Two hundred and two 2-cell mouse embryos were co-cultured with oviductal epithelial cells or endometrium from the patients with ovarian endometrial cyst,and 314 embryos co-cultured with those from the women without endometriosis as control respectively. Results: Among the embryos co-cultured with oviductal epithelial cells and endometrium of endometriosis,25.9% (P0.05) and 11.1% (P0.05) developed to expanded blastocyst after 72 hrs to 96 hrs of culture in vitro,as compared with 25.7% and 26.2% respectively in the controls. Conclusions: The results suggest that the human oviductal epithelial cells of endometriosis do not exert any adverse effects on early embryogenesis in vitro,but the endometrium has notable inhibitory effects on embryonic development,which may explain the decreased fertility observed in the patients with endometriosis.