Can a grape ingredient, resveratrol, be the promised warrior to defeat endometriosis?

An antioxidant, anti-angiogenic, and anti-inflammatory molecule to fight with endometriosis

Key Points

Highlights:

• Resveratrol inhibits the growth of endometrial tissues in a dose and time-dependent manner.

Importance:

• The study claims that increasing concentrations of Resveratrol prevent the growth of endometrial tissue, increase apoptotic genes, and promotes a decrease in the Nitric oxide secretion.

 What's done here:

• Endometrial biopsies from healthy women and endometriosis patients (n=9 for each group) were placed in 3D fibrin matrix gels to form an endometriosis model.
• The culture gels were grouped according to the supplemented Resveratrol concentrations.
• All groups were cultured for 21 days and regularly checked for stromal cell growth, epithelial monolayer formation, and angiogenesis.
• At the end of the study, amounts of Nitric Oxide, and apoptotic gene expression levels were measured by ELISA and PCR.

Key Results:

• The growth trend of cultured tissue was decreased in both endometriosis and healthy groups in a dose-dependent manner, but the decrease was more prominent in healthy tissues.
• Nitric Oxide levels have not changed in lower doses but significantly decreased at 100 and 200 μM concentrations in both cultures of endometriosis and healthy patients.
• The Resveratrol supplement increased the expression of apoptotic genes (TP53, Bax, caspase 3, Sirt1) significantly at different Resveratrol concentrations in the eutopic and ectopic endometrial cells.
• No significant difference was found when comparing eutopic endometrium from healthy and endometriosis patients.

Limitations:

• Although the 3D endometriosis model is an acknowledged method, the differences between endometriosis cells and the eutopic endometrial cells are controversial and this difference may affect the results.
• The results should be repeated with higher sample sizes.

Lay Summary

Endometriosis is a chronic estrogen-dependent disorder and has a known relationship with angiogenesis, inflammation, and oxidative stress.

Resveratrol is a part of a "polyphenol" compound which are thought to act like antioxidants, protects the body against damage. This compound is normally found in the skin of red grapes, but you can also find it in peanuts and berries.

In a recent study conducted by Khazei et al. a phytoestrogen called Resveratrol which has anti-inflammatory, anti-estrogenic, anti-angiogenic, and antioxidant effects has been used targeting endometriosis.

The researchers prepared a 3C fibrin matrix gel cell culture to mimic endometriosis by using eutopic endometrial cells from endometriosis patients and healthy controls. The increasing doses of Resveratrol were applied rapidly to the culture media and the amount of cell growth, Nitric Oxide levels, and the apoptotic gene response was evaluated.

The authors found out that Resveratrol inhibits cell growth, decreases Nitric Oxide synthesis, and promotes apoptotic genes in a dose-dependent manner in the eutopic endometrium cell cultures of both healthy and endometriosis patients.

The authors concluded that although Resveratrol showed promising results, it still needs additional clinical trials with an adequate sample size for the investigation of the mechanisms of Resveratrol in endometriosis.

Research Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32896495/