New Delhi: Endometriosis leaves some patients in crippling pain and others feeling nothing at all — scientists have now found a molecular difference in tissues which might explain this mystery.
A team of researchers at the Yale School of Medicine were studying biopsies from 19 patients with symptomatic and asymptomatic endometriosis when they came across genetic differences between cases where patients felt pain and where they didn’t. The findings were published on 10 September by scientists in Molecular Human Reproduction.
“This gives us a window to potentially understand why some endometriosis causes pain, and it will be the starting point for investigations that help us treat that pain in a better way,” said lead author Hugh Taylor in a statement.
Also read: For the first time, scientists have made brainstem cells in a petri dish
An understudied disease
Endometriosis is a gynaecologic condition where tissue similar to that lining the uterus grows outside of it. It affects nearly 10 per cent of all women and symptoms include severe pain during menstruation, heavy menstrual bleeding, chronic pelvic pain, infertility, abdominal bloating and nausea. The disease has no treatment and most doctors just try to manage a patient’s pain with medication.
“The things we use typically to treat pain now don’t really get at the root cause of pain. Understanding what the source of the pain is and blocking it is likely to be much more effective,” Taylor added.
However, the symptoms themselves don’t appear relative to the seriousness of the disease. When Taylor’s team studied biopsies of 19 patients and analysed them using RNA sequencing, they found that nearly 900 genes were expressed differently in people who felt pain. The team found that a molecule called IL16, an inflammatory molecule, could lead to painful symptoms.
“IL16 might be recruiting immune cells into endometriotic lesions and promote producing more inflammatory cytokines. This cascade might heighten pain and inflammation,” said co-author Ramanaiah Mamillapalli in a statement.
Cytokines are small proteins that act as chemical messengers to help control inflammation and coordinate the body’s immune response. The team now hopes that treatments for endometriosis might try to target these cytokines to at least reduce the pain.
“More research will be needed to determine if IL16 indeed is a driver of painful symptoms. We plan to study whether the use of drugs that block this protein can reduce pain associated with endometriosis,” Mamillapalli added.