Does Sexual Function and Quality of Life Improve after Medical Therapy in Women with Endometriosis? A Single-Institution Retrospective Analysis

Background: Endometriosis is a gynecological condition affecting up to 10% of women of reproductive age and characterized by chronic pain. Pain is the major cause of the impairment of quality of life in all aspects of these patients. Previous studies have shown that endometriosis treatment, hormonal or surgical, has proven effective not only in controlling the disease but also in improving symptoms, and we can assume also effective in improving quality of life. Methods: This study evaluates quality of life and sexual function in patients with endometriosis at the time of diagnosis and after 6 months of medical therapy, to assess the impact of treatment on these aspects. We evaluated retrospectively patients with a diagnosis of endometriosis between 2018 and 2020. All patients underwent gynecological examination and transvaginal ultrasound and filled in three questionnaires. The same evaluation was provided after taking medical hormonal therapy. Results: The improvement of dysmenorrhea, chronic pelvic pain, and dyspareunia after medical treatment were statistically significant. Instead, items concerning arousal, lubrication, and sexual satisfaction showed a statistically significant worsening after therapy. Conclusions: We can state that hormone therapy alone is not sufficient to achieve an improvement in the patient's quality of life and sexual function. Emerging evidence suggests that most of these patients showed a central sensibilization phenomenon characterized by an amplification of the response to a peripheral and/or neuropathic nociceptive trigger, which is expressed by hyperalgesia and allodynia. For this reason, in these patients, it is better to adopt a multimodal and multidisciplinary approach, including other professional figures, that acts on pain and also intervenes in all those conditions that contribute to worsening quality of life

Gene Polymorphism in Five Target Genes of Immunosuppressive Therapy and Risk of Development of Preeclampsia

Pregnancy can be considered as an allogeneic transplant and preeclampsia can be seen as a failure of the acceptance mechanisms of this transplant as occurs in acute organ transplant rejection. Some genetic polymorphisms may be involved in its pathogenesis. Since the kidney is one of the organs mainly involved in preeclampsia, our study attempted to determine the frequencies of single nucleotide polymorphisms of DNA (SNP) in 3 genes (adenosine triphosphate-binding cassette sub-family B member 1 (ABCB1)/multi drug reactivity 1 (MDR1) gene, interleukin 10 gene and tumor necrosis factor α gene) which are targets of immunosuppressive therapies and related to acute renal rejection. The study was an observational, monocentric, case-control study. We enrolled 20 women with severe preeclampsia and 10 women age-matched with regular pregnancy. Continuous variables were compared by the Student’s t-test for independent variables or using the Mann-Whitney test depending on their distribution. We used Fisher test to compare categorical variables between cases and controls, while we used logistic regression model to evaluate which risk factor was associated with preeclampsia. Although there was no statistically significant difference between the two groups, we found different percentages of two of the polymorphisms considered (rs1045642 and rs2032582 in the gene ABCB1). Despite these results, our work may be helpful for future research to better understand the pathogenesis of preeclampsia