Autoreactivity in women with endometriosis

Pamela V. Taylor, P V Taylor, Michael D. Maloney, M D Maloney, James M. Campbell, J M Campbell, S M Skerrow, SYLVIA M. SKERROW, M M Nip, MARIA M. C. NIP, Rekha Parmar, R Parmar, GEOFFREY TATE, G Tate
British journal of obstetrics and gynaecology · 1991 · vol. 98(7) , pp. 680–684 · doi:10.1111/j.1471-0528.1991.tb13455.x · PMID:1883792 · W1999061705
article OA: closed CC0 ⤵ 49 in-corpus citations
View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-07 ⓘ

Women with endometriosis exhibited a significantly higher prevalence of various autoantibodies, including antinuclear and smooth muscle antibodies, and elevated IgG and IgM levels compared to control subjects.

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

Abstract

Serum samples from 71 patients with laparoscopically staged endometriosis and from 109 age-matched non-pregnant control women were tested for antibodies to nuclear, phospholipid, smooth muscle and sperm antigens. Immunoglobulin G, M and A and complement components C3 and C4 were measured. Prevalence of the following autoantibodies was statistically significantly greater in women with endometriosis than in the control group: antinuclear antibodies, antibodies to ribonucleoproteins, smooth muscle antibodies, lupus anticoagulant and anticardiolipin antibody. Forty-one women with endometriosis (58%) had some type of autoantibody compared with 13 controls (12%). More women in the endometriosis group had IgG and IgM levels above the normal range. This was statistically significant for IgG in women with grade 3 and for IgM in those with grade 4 endometriosis, IgG levels were significantly higher in antibody-positive women with endometriosis than in the control group. Immunoglobulin and complement component levels tended to have a positive correlation with stage of disease.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

mesh:D004715endometriosis

MeSH descriptors

Antibodies Endometriosis Adolescent Adult Antibodies Autoantibodies Autoantibodies Cardiolipins Cardiolipins Complement C3 Complement C3 Complement C4 Complement C4 Endometriosis Female Fluorescent Antibody Technique Humans Immunoglobulin A Immunoglobulin A Immunoglobulin G

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 (26)

Cited by (49)

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-06-04T01:30:01.192114+00:00
openalex
last seen: 2026-06-04T00:00:01.174412+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-05-13T22:12:00.397535+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK