Grant: Operating Grant

Endometriosis is a chronic, painful, progressive, disease that has a profoundly deleterious effect upon social functioning, emotional well-being, vitality, and employment of affected women. The annual costs associated with surgically confirmed endometriosis in Canada are approximately two billion dollars. Moreover, the health care costs associated with endometriosis are similar to or greater than other chronic diseases such as Crohns disease, diabetes, asthma, migraines, and rheumatoid arthritis. Sadly, women with endometriosis experience significant delays of up to twelve years before a definitive diagnosis is achieved. The gold standard for diagnosis remains laparoscopic visualization of endometriotic implants followed by confirmation of disease by a pathologist. Thus, there is an urgent need to identify novel clinical markers of endometriosis. Our preliminary data suggest that the plasma concentrations of BDNF are significantly higher in women with endometriosis compared to a control population of women without endometriosis. Therefore, we hypothesize that this protein is a potentially valuable candidate clinical marker of endometriosis. Consequently, we propose a pre-clinical discovery phase project to better characterize the concentrations of BDNF in the blood as a diagnostic test for endometriosis. We further postulate that blood concentrations of BDNF could be used to monitor disease progression and patient response to treatments. Finally, we plan to employ our animal model of endometriosis to assess the efficacy of a novel therapeutic agent in the treatment endometriosis and determine if this agent preserves fertility. Successful completion of this aim will provide a novel treatment for infertile women with endometriosis who currently are forced to choose between treating their endometriosis or refusing medication in order to achieve pregnancy. Therefore, we propose that results of this project will provide important advances for women with endometriosis.