Bridging the gap: is Chlamydia trachomatis a risk factor for developing adenomyosis?

Chlamydia trachomatis and adenomyosis are prevalent health issues significantly impacting women’s reproductive health. While adenomyosis is characterised by endometrial tissue invading the myometrium, C. trachomatis is linked to chronic reproductive disease in women such as pelvic inflammatory disease. Despite increasing prevalence of both conditions, the potential link between them remains underexplored. Chronic inflammation and epithelial-mesenchymal transition induced by C. trachomatis may contribute to the pathogenesis of adenomyosis, particularly through inflammatory cytokines, matrix metalloproteinases, and hormonal dysregulation. This review aims to establish a foundation for future research to unravel the potential molecular process that may link C. trachomatis infection and adenomyosis. Understanding these connections could lead to the development of enhanced diagnostic techniques and targeted therapeutic interventions, consequently improving patient outcomes in reproductive health.

Not applicable. Funding Authors Phillips and Jelocnik received funding from the University of the Sunshine Coast through an internal funding scheme (LAUNCH) that included funds for writing and publication of this review and follow up in-vitro investigations. Author information Authors and Affiliations Corresponding author Ethics declarations Ethics approval and consent to participate Not applicable. Consent for publication Not applicable. Competing interests The authors declare no competing interests. Additional information Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Rights and permissions Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. About this article Cite this article Doyle, M., Jelocnik, M., Nayda, B. et al. Bridging the gap: is Chlamydia trachomatis a risk factor for developing adenomyosis?. BMC Women's Health (2026). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12905-026-04810-7 Received: Accepted: Published: DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12905-026-04810-7