CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

There is a real need for more effective approaches to endometriosis treatment. The aim of this work was to evaluate the effect of different treatment options on endometriotic lesion development in a murine model of endometriosis. For this purpose endometriotic lesions were induced in two months old female Balb/c mice. Three parallel experiments were performed to evaluate: bevacizumab, a humanized anti-VEGF antibody; celecoxib, a selective COX-2 inhibitor; and letrozole and anastrozole, two aromatase inhibitors, on development, proliferation and apoptosis of ectopic endometrial tissue. After treatment, lesions were measured, proliferation was evaluated by immunohistochemistry for PCNA, and percentages of apoptotic cells were determined using TUNEL technique. We observed that although only celecoxib decreases the number of lesions developed per animal (p<0.05 vs. control), the size of the endometriotic lesions was significantly smaller after all the treatments assayed (p<0.05 vs. control). Additionally we found that bevacizumab, celecoxib, anastrozole and letrozole treatments induced a significant inhibition in cell proliferation (p<0.001, p<0.05, p<0.01 and p<0.001 vs. control respectively) and a significant increase in apoptosis (p<0.0001, p<0.05, p<0.05 and p<0.01 vs. control respectively). In conclusion, we observed that bevacizumab, letrozole and anastrozole significantly diminished the size of the ectopic lesions, and celecoxib inhibited both the establishment and the development of endometriosis in the murine model. Also, we have shown that inhibition of angiogenesis, aromatase or COX-2 activity exerted beneficial effects on endometriosis by regulating apoptosis and cell proliferation in the endometriotic lesions. This data favors further investigation of these compounds as a treatment for endometriosis.