Nowon Eulji University Hospital Obstetrics and Gynecology Professor Kwon Yong-soon and Kwak Jae-young’s team published a thesis titled ‘The role of vascular endothelial growth factor in the pathogenesis of adenomyosis’. The results of the study were published as a new pathogenesis of adenomyosis.
Vascular endothelial growth factor creates new blood vessels that are essential for tissue growth in our body. It is also known as a factor that increases the size of cancer cells by proliferating microvessels and has the properties of growing tissues.
The research team hypothesized that this vascular endothelial growth factor, when overexpressed in the muscle layer of the uterus, would cause adenomyosis by increasing the size of the uterus, similar to growing cancer cells, and compared the uterine tissues.
Three tests, including immunochemical tissue staining, PCR test, and protein electrophoresis test, were performed on the endometrium, myometrium, and 60 tissues with adenomyosis collected from patients with adenomyosis, and the distribution of vascular endothelial growth factors was investigated.
As a result, vascular endothelial growth factor was detected more predominantly in lesions with myometrium and adenomyosis than in the endometrium. That is, it was found that vascular endothelial growth factor acts on the uterine muscle layer and induces an increase in the size of the uterus.
Professor Kwon Yong-soon said, “Studies have focused only on the fact that the pathogenesis of adenomyosis occurs from the infiltrating factor of the endometrium, the innermost part of the uterus, but this study is one of the fundamental causes of thickening of the endometrium, ‘vascular endothelial growth factor’. It is very meaningful that it has been clinically newly revealed that it is also involved.”
The paper was published in the SCI journal Clinical and Experimental Obstetrics and Gynecology, the June issue of CEOG. By Jang Jong-ho, reporter [email protected]