Environmental Manipulations as an Effective Alternative Treatment to Reduce Endometriosis Progression

Annelyn Torres-Reverón, Leslie L Rivera, Leslie L. Rivera-López, Idhaliz Flores, Caroline B Appleyard
Reproductive sciences (Thousand Oaks, Calif.) · 2017 · vol. 25(9) , pp. 1336–1348 · doi:10.1177/1933719117741374 · PMID:29137551 · PMC6346300 · W2769703799
article OA: bronze CC0 ⤵ 13 in-corpus citations
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⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06+body, 2026-06-07 ⓘ

Environmental enrichment in rats reduced endometriosis vesicle size and number and dampened stress-related gene expression in vesicles compared to non-enriched rats.

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⚙ AI-generated deep summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-07 ⓘ

The study investigated whether environmental enrichment (EE) alters endometriosis progression and stress-related neuroendocrine signaling in a rat autotransplantation model, comparing enriched versus non-enriched housing conditions before and during growth of surgically induced endometriotic lesions. After 8 weeks and a further 60 days of lesion progression, the authors measured anxiety-like behaviors and vesicle size/number, and assessed corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), urocortin-1, CRH receptor (CRHR1/CRHR2), and glucocorticoid receptor (GR) expression by quantitative real-time PCR in vesicles. Endometriosis itself did not change anxiety-like behavior, but EE reduced basal anxiety-like behavior and was associated with fewer (28% reduction) and smaller endometriotic vesicles, alongside dampened CRH and GR increases observed in non-enriched vesicles; urocortin-1 increased in enriched vesicles, indicating different pathway activation. A limitation explicitly implied by the design is that outcomes are based on animal model endpoints without confirming causal relevance to human disease mechanisms beyond these measured markers. This paper is centrally about endometriosis — it tests environmental enrichment as a stress-reducing strategy to reduce endometriosis lesion progression in rats.

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Condition tags

endometriosis

MeSH descriptors

Behavior, Animal Endometriosis Environment Housing, Animal Uterus Animals Anxiety Anxiety Anxiety Behavior, Animal Corticotropin-Releasing Hormone Corticotropin-Releasing Hormone Disease Models, Animal Disease Progression Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Female Rats Rats, Sprague-Dawley

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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 (71)

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