Cervical mucus proteome in endometriosis

Giuseppe Grande, Federica Vincenzoni, Domenico Milardi, Giuseppina Pompa, Domenico Ricciardi, Erika Fruscella, E. Fruscella, Francesca Mancini, Francesca Romana Mancini, Alfredo Pontecorvi, Massimo Castagnola, Riccardo Marana
Clinical proteomics · 2017 · vol. 14(1) , pp. 7 · doi:10.1186/s12014-017-9142-4 · PMID:28174513 · PMC5290661 · W2584528756
article OA: gold CC0 ⤵ 24 in-corpus citations
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⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-08 ⓘ

This study profiled the cervical mucus proteome in endometriosis patients and identified differentially expressed proteins, some involved in inflammation, innate immunity, and antimicrobial activity, which may aid in noninvasive diagnosis.

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⚙ AI-generated deep summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-08 ⓘ

This study profiled the cervical mucus proteome in 10 infertile women with surgically confirmed ovarian endometriotic cysts and 10 fertile controls using soluble acidic-fraction sampling collected in the ovulatory phase, followed by high-resolution LC–MS/MS (Orbitrap Elite) and quantitative bioinformatic analysis of identified proteins. The authors report an inflammatory protein pattern in endometriosis, with six proteins quantitatively increased (mostly inflammatory), nine proteins reduced including innate immunity factors (CRISP-3, PGLYRP1) and an oxidative-stress protection protein (HSPB1), and fifteen proteins not detected in endometriosis samples, including antimicrobial-related proteins (SLURP1, KLK13). A major limitation explicitly evident from the design is the small sample size and the focus on cervical mucus collected in a single cycle phase from women with ovarian endometriotic cysts. This paper is centrally about endometriosis — it characterizes the cervical mucus proteomic differences in women with endometriosis to identify candidate noninvasive diagnostic proteins.

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Abstract

BACKGROUND: Endometriosis is a chronic gynecological inflammatory disease characterized by the presence of functional endometrial glands and stroma outside of the uterine cavity. It affects 7-10% of women of reproductive age and up to 50% of women with infertility. The current gold standard for the diagnosis combines laparoscopic evaluation and biopsy of the visualized lesions. However, laparoscopy requires general anesthesia and developed surgical skills and it has a high procedural cost. In addition, it is associated with the risk, although rare, of potential intraoperative or postoperative complications. To date, several noninvasive biomarkers have been proposed; however, no definite diagnostic biomarker is yet available. The aim of this study was to characterize the CM proteome in patients with endometriosis using high resolution mass spectrometry-based proteomics, implemented by bioinformatic tools for quantitative analysis, in order to investigate the pathophysiological mechanisms of endometriosis. METHODS: Cervical mucus samples were collected from patients affected by endometriosis and fertile controls. An aliquot of the soluble acidic fraction of each cervical mucus sample, corresponding to 0.5 mg of total protein, was left to digest with sequencing grade modified porcine trypsin. The peptides were analyzed by LC-MS/MS on a high resolution Orbitrap Elite mass spectrometer and data were evaluated using bioinformatic tools. RESULTS: We aimed at the first total profiling of the cervical mucus proteome in endometriosis. From the list of identified proteins, we detected a number of differentially expressed proteins, including some functionally significant proteins. Six proteins were quantitatively increased in endometriosis, almost all being involved in the inflammatory pattern. Nine proteins were quantitatively reduced in endometriosis, including some proteins related with local innate immunity (CRISP-3 and Pglyrp1) and protection against oxidative stress (HSPB1). Fifteen proteins were not detected in endometriosis samples including certain proteins involved in antimicrobial activity (SLURP1 and KLK13) and related to seminal plasma liquefaction and male fertility (KLK13). CONCLUSIONS: This is the first application of high resolution mass spectrometry-based proteomics aimed in detecting an array of proteins in CM to be proposed for the noninvasive diagnosis of endometriosis. This chronic disease presents in CM an inflammatory protein pattern.

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endometriosisinfertility

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