The differential expression of microRNA-143,145 in endometriosis

Background: recent studies showed that inappropriate expression of micrornas (mirnas) is strongly associated with tumor-related processes in humans (2-9,11-17). objective: to understand the changes of mirnas in endometriosis. materials and methods: with real-time rt-pcr, we investigated the mir-143 and mir-145 expression in eutopic (eu, n=2) and ectopic endometrium (ec, n=11) (from women with endometriosis) (as well as eu+ec, n=11), along with the normal endometrium (en, n=22) (from women without endometriosis, but with leiomyoma). results: we did not find that the expression of mir-143 and/or mir-145 in en or ec changed with menstrual cycle. but our results showed the mir-143 was up-regulated in ec (p=0.000) compared to en. the mir-143 was also up-regulated in eu, but the difference did not reach statistically significance (p=0.053). compared to eu, the expression of mir-143 in ec was up-regulated (p=0.016). mir-145 had the similar characteristic to mir-143. the mir-145 was up-regulated in both eu (p=0.004) and ec (p=0.000) in compared to en group. when compared with eu, the mir-145 in ec was up-regulated (p=0.008). conclusion: in conclusion, the mir-143 and mir-145 may play a certain role in the development and progression of endometriosis.