Abstract

BACKGROUND: Endometriosis is a benign gynecological disease that affects about 1 of all women and up to 15 of women of childbearing age. To date, none of the proposed theories exhaustively explain the pathophysiology of the disease or the associated clinical manifestations. As part of efforts to introduce new methods for the early and non-invasive diagnosis of endometriosis, this project investigated changes in the expression of miR-214-5p and miR-548-5p in ectopic and eutopic tissue compared to normal endometrial tissue. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Forty-five samples (15 eutopic, 15 ectopic and 15 healthy controls) from women referred to Shahid Sadoughi Hospital (Yazd, Iran). RNA extraction was performed using an RNA extraction kit, and cDNA was synthesized. Two-step qRT-PCR was performed according to the manufacturer's instructions. GraphPad Prism 8 software and Two-Way ANOVA test were used to compare fold-change expression. RESULTS: The results indicate a significant down-regulation of miR-214-5p expression levels (P-value < 0.05) and an increase in miR-548-5p expression levels (P-value < 0.05) in endometriosis samples compared to those in control tissues. CONCLUSION: miR-214-5p and miR-548-5p may regulate the pathogenesis of endometriosis. The down-regulation of miR-214-5p in people with endometriosis compared to healthy individuals may indicate its suppressive role. The upregulation of miR-548-5p could confirm the oncogenic role of this microRNA in endometriosis. The development of new therapeutic strategies targeting these miRNAs could be promising in the treatment of this disease.