Interaction of sperm with endometrium can regulate genes involved in endometrial receptivity pathway in mice: An experimental study.

Marziyeh Ajdary, Zahra Zandieh, Amjadi FS, Keyhanfar F, Mehdizadeh M, Reza Aflatoonian
International journal of reproductive biomedicine · 2020 · doi:10.18502/ijrm.v13i10.7765 · PMID:33134794 · PMC7569714
OA: gold CC-BY-4.0
📄 Open PDF Full text JSON View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by qwen3.7-flash, 2026-08-23 ⓘ

In mice, interaction between sperm and endometrium significantly upregulated the expression of genes including LIF, LIFR, MUC1, VEGF, EGF, and FGF2 involved in the endometrial receptivity pathway compared to vasectomized controls.

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

⚙ AI-generated deep summary by qwen3.7-flash, 2026-08-23 · read from full text ⓘ

This experimental study investigated the impact of sperm interaction with the endometrium on gene expression related to receptivity in a mouse model by comparing females mated with vasectomized versus non-vasectomized males. Quantitative real-time PCR analysis revealed that seminal plasma significantly upregulated the mRNA levels of LIF, MUC1, VEGF, EGF, and FGF2, while also altering the expression of LIFR, HOXA10, PGR, CSF, and HBEGF. The authors concluded that seminal plasma regulates the endometrial environment by modifying the expression of genes critical for proliferation, differentiation, and angiogenesis during the implantation phase. Relevance to endometriosis: listed as one indication for GnRH antagonists, though the paper's main focus is uterine fibroids.

Read from the paper's body, not the abstract. Not a substitute for reading the paper. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

BackgroundMany researchers consider implantation and endometrial receptivity as pertinent issues in reproductive science. Although, several experiments have been performed and their results evaluated, yet there is no confirmed evidence about the related factors and the role of sperm in endometrial receptivity.ObjectiveTo investigate the effect of the sperm-endometrium interaction in regulating genes involved in the endometrial receptivity pathway.Materials and methodsIn this experimental study, 10 male and 30 female NMRI mice were included, and half of the male cases were vasectomized. The subjects were divided into two groups as follows; group 1 (case) comprised of 15 females mated with 5 non-vasectomized male mice, while group 2 (control) consisted of 15 females mated with 5 vasectomized males. Cases were sacrificed and assessed after 36 hr and the endometrial tissue was extracted and kept at -80°C until the next use. The expression of the endometrial receptivity pathway genes, including VEGF, HBEGF, FGF2, EGF, LIF, LIFR, HOXA10, MUC1, PGR, and CSF, was examined in both groups. For statistical analysis, an independent samples test (Mean ± SD) was used.ResultsThe mRNA levels of LIF (p = 0.045), LIFR (p = 0.040), MUC1 (p = 0.032), VEGF (p = 0.022), EFG (p = 0.035), and FGF2 (p = 0.040) were significantly upregulated in the case group compared with the control group.ConclusionFinally, seminal plasma was observed to be effective in expressing the involved genes in the successful implantation pathway, including LIF, LIFR, MUC1, VEGF, EGF, and FGF2.
Full text 15,936 characters · extracted from pmc-nxml · 2 sections · click to expand

Section

Finally, it was found that the seminal plasma is effective in expressing the involved genes in implantation in the in vivo model. In fact, seminal plasma increases endometrial receptivity prior to an embryo transfer. Seminal plasma induces the expression of LIF, LIFR, MUC1, VEGF, EGF, and FGF2 genes that increase stromal cell survival and endometrial tissue proliferation before an implantation. According to the obtained results in this study, seminal plasma can be introduced as an auxiliary and effective factor in successful implantation. Taken together, our findings and those of others suggest that the effects of seminal plasma on the endometrium and pregnancy should be investigated in an in vivo/in vitro model for confirmation of these results.

Coi Statement

The authors declare that there is no competing interest.

Text is read by the "Ask this paper" AI Q&A widget below. Extraction quality varies by source — PMC NXML preserves structure cleanly, OA-HTML may include some navigation residue, and OA-PDF can have broken hyphenation. The publisher copy (via DOI) is the canonical version.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

⚙ Ask this paper AI returns verbatim quotes from the full text · source: pmc-nxml ⓘ

Answers must be backed by verbatim quotes from this paper's full text. Hallucinated quotes are dropped automatically; if no verbatim passage answers the question, we say so. How this works

Citation neighborhood (no data yet)

We don't have any in-corpus citations linked to this paper yet. The paper's references may be in our DB but unresolved to ``paper_id`` (resolution happens at ingest when the cited DOI matches a row we already have). Run the cross-source citation reconcile pass to retry.

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-08-23T09:30:01.253652+00:00
License: CC-BY-4.0 · commercial use OK · attribution required
Per Europe PMC