Background: Endometriosis is an immune-mediated inflammatory disease that causes the growth of endometrial-like tissue outside the uterus. Diagnostics of this disease are difficult, often invasive, and time-consuming, therefore non-invasive diagnostic methods and parameters are very desirable in endometriosis detection.
Objectives: The study aimed to check whether there are any differences in the monosaccharide composition of N-glycans in serum IgG of women with advanced endometriosis and women with mild gynecological diseases.
Materials and methods: The study material consisted of IgG samples isolated from blood sera derived from patients diagnosed with advanced endometriosis and women without endometriosis but with other gynecological diseases. To determine the monosaccharide composition of N-glycans in IgG, the gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) method was used.
Results: It was observed a significantly higher content of GlcNAc in the group of women with mild gynecological diseases, compared to the group of patients with advanced endometriosis (6.5 ± 5.2 and 4.5 ± 5.7; p = 0.0007704, respectively). In addition, the content of fucose was significantly higher in the group of women with mild gynecological diseases compared to women with advanced endometriosis (1.9 ± 0.5 and 1.7 ± 1.2; p = 0.000274, respectively).
Conclusions: The content of GlcNAc and fucose in serum IgG may be useful markers differentiating patients with advanced endometriosis from women without endometriosis but with mild gynecological diseases.
Keywords: Advanced endometriosis; GC-MS analysis; IgG glycosylation; N-glycans.
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