Differential expression of microRNAs between eutopic and ectopic endometrium in ovarian endometriosis

Endometriosis, defined as the presence of endometrial tissue outside the uterus, is a common gynecological disease with poorly understood pathogenesis. MicroRNAs are members of a class of small noncoding RNA molecules that have a critical role in posttranscriptional regulation of gene expression by repression of target mRNAs translation. We assessed differentially expressed microRNAs in ectopic endometrium compared with eutopic endometrium in 3 patients through microarray analysis. We identified 50 microRNAs differentially expressed and the differential expression of five microRNAs was validated by real-time RT-PCR in other 13 patients. We identified in silico their predicted targets, several of which match the genes that have been identified to be differentially expressed in ectopic versus eutopic endometrium in studies of gene expression. A functional analysis of the predicted targets indicates that several of these are involved in molecular pathways implicated in endometriosis, thus strengthening the hypothesis of the role of microRNAs in this pathology.