Biomarkers of endometriosis

Fassbender A, Amelie Fassbender, Alexandra Vodolazkaia, Vodolazkaia A, Philippa T. K. Saunders, Philippa Saunders, Dan I. Lebovic, Dan Lebovic, Waelkens E, Etienne Waelkens, De Moor B, Bart De Moor, D'Hooghe T, Thomas D'Hooghe, Thomas D’Hooghe
Fertility and sterility · 2013 · vol. 99(4) , pp. 1135–1145 · doi:10.1016/j.fertnstert.2013.01.097 · PMID:23414923 · W2151444028
review OA: bronze CC0 ⤵ 109 in-corpus citations
🔓 Open OA copy View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-07 ⓘ

This paper identifies and analyzes key biomarkers associated with endometriosis, aiming to improve diagnosis and understanding of the disease.

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

Abstract

A noninvasive test for endometriosis would be useful for the early detection of endometriosis in symptomatic women who have pelvic pain and/or subfertility with normal ultrasound results. This would include nearly all cases of minimal-to-mild endometriosis, some cases of moderate-to-severe endometriosis without a clearly visible ovarian endometrioma, and cases with pelvic adhesions and/or other pelvic pathology that might benefit from surgery to improve pelvic pain and/or subfertility. This overview discusses the diagnostic performance of noninvasive or semi-invasive tests for endometriosis, including panels of known peripheral blood biomarkers, protein/peptide markers discovered by proteomics, miRNA, and endometrial nerve fiber density. Tests with high sensitivity and acceptable specificity have been developed; some have been validated in independent populations and are therefore promising. To make real progress, international agreement on biobank development is needed for standard operating procedures for the collection, treatment, storage, and analysis of tissue samples and for detailed clinical phenotyping of these samples. Furthermore, it is necessary to validate the diagnostic accuracy of any promising test prospectively in an independent symptomatic patient population with subfertility and/or pain without clear ultrasound evidence of endometriosis and with a clinical indication for surgery, divided into cases with laparoscopically and histologically confirmed endometriosis and controls with laparoscopically confirmed absence of endometriosis.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

endometriosis

MeSH descriptors

Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometrium Proteomics Biomarkers Biomarkers Endometriosis Endometrium Female Humans Proteomics Proteomics Reproducibility of Results

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 (100)

Cited by (50)

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-08-10T06:11:17.106188+00:00
openalex
last seen: 2026-06-10T17:14:06.276822+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-05-13T22:19:12.052662+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK