Background: Endometriosis is a painful chronic inflammatory disease in which endometrium that normally grows inside the uterus grows outside it. Epidemiologic studies have suggested that the ubiquitously distributed endocrine disrupting chemical (EDC) exposure may contribute to the high prevalence of endometriosis in recent decades. NP, a common detergent metabolite, is considered to be an endocrine disruptor due to its ability to mimic estrogen and in turn disrupt the natural balance of hormones in affected organisms.
Aim: The purpose of this study is to analyse whether the endocrine disruptor NP exposure enhances the development of endometriosis.
Experimental Design: The female B6 mice were exposed to low dose NP that is 5 mg/Kg body weight/day determined by the Danish Environmental Agency and high dose that is 50ug/kg body weight per day for 20 days via oral route, surgery was done on 21st day to develop endometriosis murine model. The oral feeding continues for 4 weeks and mice were sacrificed 4 weeks after surgery. The lesions were collected to measure lesion size, lesion area, lesion growth rate, tissue immunofluorescence staining and lesion cells staining.
Results: The results showed that NP exposure enhanced lesion sizes and area. We also found that there were about 5% to 10% CD31+ in lesion tissue sections from NP exposed groups, suggesting that NP effect is associated with angiogenesis. Among the infiltrated CD45+ immune cells in lesions, there were significantly higher frequency of plasmacytoid dendritic cells, but not conventional dendritic cells, in NP exposed lesions than controls.
Conclusion: Our study demonstrates that NP exposure enhances the development of endometriosis, at least in part, through angiogenesis. The role of pDC in NP effect and endometriosis is worthy to further investigated