Evaluation of a panel of 28 biomarkers for the non-invasive diagnosis of endometriosis

A Vodolazkaia, Vodolazkaia A, Alexandra Vodolazkaia, El-Aalamat Y, Y El-Aalamat, D Popovic, Popovic D, Dušan Popović, Attila Mihalyi, Mihalyi A, A Mihalyi, X Bossuyt, Bossuyt X, Xavier Bossuyt, Cleophas Kyama, C M Kyama, Amelie Fassbender, Fassbender A, A Fassbender, A Bokor, Bokor A, Attila Bokor, Dominique Schols, D. Schols, Dana Huskens, D Huskens, Christel Meuleman, C Meuleman, Meuleman C, K Peeraer, Karen Peeraer, C Tomassetti, Carla Tomassetti, Olivier Gevaert, O Gevaert, Waelkens E, E Waelkens, Etienne Waelkens, Kasran A, A Kasran, Ahmad Kasran, De Moor B, B. De Moor, Bart De Moor, Thomas D’Hooghe, D'Hooghe TM, T M D'Hooghe, Thomas D'Hooghe
Human Reproduction · 2012 · vol. 27(9) , pp. 2698–2711 · doi:10.1093/humrep/des234 · PMID:22736326 · W2130807780
Diagnostic accuracy OA: bronze CC0 ⤵ 151 in-corpus citations
📄 Open PDF View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by gemini-2.5-flash-lite, 2026-06-08 ⓘ

Multivariate analysis of four plasma biomarkers, annexin V, VEGF, CA-125, and sICAM-1 or glycodelin, measured during menstruation, diagnosed ultrasound-undetectable endometriosis with 81-90% sensitivity and 63-81% specificity.

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

Abstract

BACKGROUND: At present, the only way to conclusively diagnose endometriosis is laparoscopic inspection, preferably with histological confirmation. This contributes to the delay in the diagnosis of endometriosis which is 6-11 years. So far non-invasive diagnostic approaches such as ultrasound (US), MRI or blood tests do not have sufficient diagnostic power. Our aim was to develop and validate a non-invasive diagnostic test with a high sensitivity (80% or more) for symptomatic endometriosis patients, without US evidence of endometriosis, since this is the group most in need of a non-invasive test. METHODS: A total of 28 inflammatory and non-inflammatory plasma biomarkers were measured in 353 EDTA plasma samples collected at surgery from 121 controls without endometriosis at laparoscopy and from 232 women with endometriosis (minimal-mild n = 148; moderate-severe n = 84), including 175 women without preoperative US evidence of endometriosis. Surgery was done during menstrual (n = 83), follicular (n = 135) and luteal (n = 135) phases of the menstrual cycle. For analysis, the data were randomly divided into an independent training (n = 235) and a test (n = 118) data set. Statistical analysis was done using univariate and multivariate (logistic regression and least squares support vector machines (LS-SVM) approaches in training- and test data set separately to validate our findings. RESULTS: In the training set, two models of four biomarkers (Model 1: annexin V, VEGF, CA-125 and glycodelin; Model 2: annexin V, VEGF, CA-125 and sICAM-1) analysed in plasma, obtained during the menstrual phase, could predict US-negative endometriosis with a high sensitivity (81-90%) and an acceptable specificity (68-81%). The same two models predicted US-negative endometriosis in the independent validation test set with a high sensitivity (82%) and an acceptable specificity (63-75%). CONCLUSIONS: In plasma samples obtained during menstruation, multivariate analysis of four biomarkers (annexin V, VEGF, CA-125 and sICAM-1/or glycodelin) enabled the diagnosis of endometriosis undetectable by US with a sensitivity of 81-90% and a specificity of 63-81% in independent training- and test data set. The next step is to apply these models for preoperative prediction of endometriosis in an independent set of patients with infertility and/or pain without US evidence of endometriosis, scheduled for laparoscopy.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

endometriosisinfertility

MeSH descriptors

Biomarkers Endometriosis Endometriosis Adult Adult Biomarkers Biomarkers Case-Control Studies Case-Control Studies Edetic Acid Edetic Acid Edetic Acid Endometriosis Endometriosis Female Female Humans Humans Inflammation Inflammation

Citation neighborhood (2-hop)

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. Outer rings show 2-hop neighbours — papers reached through the immediate citers/citees. [ collapse to 1-hop ]

References (86)

Cited by (50)

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-10-17T06:09:56.316927+00:00
openalex
last seen: 2026-06-10T17:14:06.276822+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-10-08T21:10:28.861444+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK