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1 Program in Neuroscience, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, United States
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: kberkley{at}psy.fsu.edu.
Endometriosis is a poorly-understood, estradiol-dependent condition associated with severe pelvic pains and defined by vascularized endometrial growths outside the uterus. Endometriosis is produced in cycling rats by autotransplanting pieces of uterus onto abdominal arteries where they develop into cysts. The surgery induces vaginal and abdominal muscle hyperalgesia, whose severity is greatest in proestrus and nearly absent in estrus. The cysts contain growth factors and cytokines and develop their own sympathetic and sensory C and A
fiber innervation. Here we used quantitative immunostaining and protein array analyses to test the hypothesis that the innervation and growth factor/cytokine content of the cysts, but not the uterine horn contribute to proestrus-to-estrous changes in hyperalgesic severity. If so these characteristics in the cysts, but not the uterine horn, should change with estrous stage. In cysts, the density of sympathetic (but not sensory) neurites and amounts of nerve growth factor (NGF) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) proteins (but not cytokines IL1,IL 6, IL10 or TNF
) were greater in proestrus than estrus. These changes were accompanied by vascular changes. Both sympathetic and sensory fibers in both stages co-labeled with TrkA, indicating that changes in NGF could act on both afferent and efferent fibers. In contrast with the cysts, no changes occurred in the uterine horn between proestrus and estrus. Together, these results suggest that coordinated proestrus-to-estrus changes in innervation and vascularization of the cysts contribute to similar changes in hyperalgesic severity. The findings also encourage consideration of endometriosis as a neurovascular condition.
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