P2X3 receptor involvement in endometriosis pain via ERK signaling pathway Shaojie Ding☯, Libo Zhu☯, Yonghong Tian☯, Tianhong Zhu, Xiufeng Huang, Xinmei Zhang* Women’s Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, P.R. China ☯ These authors contributed equally to this work. * zxm20130729@163.com
The purinergic receptor P2X ligand-gated ion channel 3 (P2X3) is crucially involved in peripheral nociceptive processes of somatic and visceral pain. Endometriosis pain is considered as a kind of inflammatory and neuropathic pain. However, whether P2X3 is involved in endometriosis pain has not been reported up to date. Here, we aimed to determine whether P2X3 expression in endometriotic lesions is involved in endometriosis pain, which is regulated by inflammatory mediators through extracellular regulated protein kinases (ERK) signalling pathway. We found that P2X3 expressions in endometriosis endometrium and endometriotic lesions were both significantly higher as compared with control endometrium (P0.05, Table 2). In addition, no significant differences of P2X3 expression
Fig 1. P2X3-immunoreactive staining in endometriosis endometrium and endometriotic lesions as compared with control endometrium. (A), Control endometrium from a woman without endometriosis; (B), Endometriosis endometrium from a woman with ovarian endometriosis; (C), Ovarian endometriotic lesions from a woman with ovarian endometriosis. The immunohistochemistry (IHC) score of P2X3 expression in endometriosis endometrium and endometriotic lesions were both significantly higher as compared with control endometrium (P
