The effect of altered Mucin1, FGF2, and HBEGF gene expression at the ectopic implantation site and endometrial tissues in the tubal pregnancy pathogenesis

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Laboratory Medicine, School of Allied Medical Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

2 Department of Endocrinology and Female Infertility, Reproductive Biomedicine Research Center, Royan Institute for Reproductive Biomedicine, ACECR, Tehran, Iran

3 Department of Clinical Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.

4 Department of Endocrinology and Infertility, Shariati Hospital, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

5 Department of Endocrinology and Female Infertility, Reproductive Biomedicine Research Center, Royan Institute for Reproductive Biomedicine, ACECR, Tehran, Iran.

6 Department of Endocrinology and Female Infertility, Reproductive Biomedicine Research Center, Royan Institute for reproductive biomedicine, ACECR, Tehran, Iran.

10.22074/ijfs.2023.1972252.1390

Abstract

Background: Mucin1 (MUC1), Fibroblast Growth Factor 2 (FGF2), and Heparin-binding epidermal growth factor (HBEGF) are involved in the endometrial receptivity pathway, leading to normal eutopic implantation. However, there is less information available about their functions in ectopic implantation. The purpose of this study was to evaluate Mucin1, FGF2, and HBEGF expression fold, as endometrial receptive markers, in the ectopic pregnancy (EP) patients following the freeze embryo transfer (FET) cycle.

Materials and Methods: A case-control study was conducted on ten patients (five EP patients and five women in the pseudo-pregnancy group, as the control samples). Fallopian tube tissues of EP patients were obtained during salpingectomy from women who conceived following FET. Each sample was taken from the ampulla at a distance of 10 mm from the gestational sac. Pseudo-pregnancy group was established in which the women who were candidates for hysterectomy for benign diseases were requested to receive human chorionic gonadotrophin therapy in the days preceding their operation.

Results: MUC1 expression in the endometrium of EP samples was higher than in the control group (P=0.04); however, its expression in fallopian samples was significantly decreased (P=0.001). HBEGF mRNA expression was not different between EP and control endometrium, whereas its expression was significantly increased in EP fallopian samples compared with the control ones (P=0.001). The same pattern was observed for FGF2 expression in fallopian samples but was significantly reduced in EP endometrial samples compared to control samples (P=0.03).

Conclusion: The altered functions of MUC1, FGF2, and HBEGF genes may underpin embryo rejection from the uterus and induction of a receptive phenotype in the fallopian epithelial cells.

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