Vascular smooth muscle alpha-actin distribution around endometrial arterioles during the menstrual cycle: increased expression during the perimenopause and lack of correlation with menorrhagia

Keren M. Abberton, K M Abberton, Nancy Taylor, N H Taylor, David Healy, D L Healy, P A Rogers, Peter A. W. Rogers
Human Reproduction · 1996 · vol. 11(1) , pp. 204–211 · doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.humrep.a019020 · PMID:8671187 · W2106290768
Other OA: bronze CC0 ⤵ 12 in-corpus citations
📄 Open PDF View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by gemini-2.5-flash-lite, 2026-06-07 ⓘ

Endometrial vascular smooth muscle alpha-actin expression increased in perimenopausal women, regardless of menorrhagia, while no differences were found between women with or without menorrhagia.

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

Abstract

Menorrhagia affects approximately 9% of all women, increasing to 20% during the perimenopause. The majority of menstrual loss occurs through the spiral arterioles - specialized endometrial vessels that are intimately involved in controlling menstruation. Our aim was to compare the distribution of vascular smooth muscle alpha-actin using immunohistochemical techniques in the endometrium of women before and during the perimenopause and with or without menorrhagia. We hypothesized that differences in vessel numbers and types exhibiting alpha-actin staining would exist between these groups, reflecting structural/functional differences. The results showed that perimenopausal menorrhagic women had significantly more smooth muscle alpha-actin expression than non-perimenopausal controls in four out of five menstrual cycle stages (P < 0.05), while perimenopausal non-menorrhagic women demonstrated a significant increase at the mid-proliferative stage only (P < 0.007). No significant differences occurred between women with or without menorrhagia before or during the perimenopause. Perimenopausal women had significantly more straight arterioles (P < 0.02) than women prior to perimenopause at the late secretory stage, while non-perimenopausal women demonstrated significantly higher numbers of spiral arterioles (P < 0.002) in the early secretory stage, although this difference had disappeared by the late secretory stage. In conclusion, we found no major differences in endometrial vascular smooth muscle alpha-actin staining between women with and without menorrhagia, but significant increases in alpha-actin staining in women showing perimenopausal symptoms.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

MeSH descriptors

Actins Endometrium Menopause Menorrhagia Menstruation Muscle, Smooth, Vascular Actins Adult Arterioles Arterioles Endometrium Female Humans Immunohistochemistry Menopause Menorrhagia Menstruation Middle Aged Muscle, Smooth, Vascular Tissue Distribution

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 (13)

Cited by (12)

Source provenance

openalex
last seen: 2026-06-10T17:14:06.276822+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-10-08T21:59:49.088203+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK