Complimentary diagnostic tools for endometrosis in biopsies of mares with clinical subfertility

Background: Endometrosis is a multifactorial disease and one of the main causes of infertility in mares, its etiologyand pathogenesis are not completely understood. It is defined as peri glandular and/or stromal endometrial fibrosis withglandular alterations. Due to the few clinical symptoms, besides anamnesis and fertility data, endometrosis requires histological confirmation. The histo-morphology and immune histochemical characteristics of the endometrium vary amongindividuals according to the disease progression. The aim of this research was to combine histology with new immune andhistochemical tools for a more precise detection of fibrotic changes of mares with endometrosis.Materials, Methods & Results: The endometrium of forty thoroughbred mares aged 5-18 years, that did not become pregnant during the last two breeding seasons in a Chilean commercial equine breeding center were biopsied. Samples weresubjected to conventional histopathology with hematoxylin-eosin as well as to specific histological staining using specifictechniques such as Alcian blue and Masson Fontana, aimed to ascertain what types of mucopolysaccharides were presentin those samples. In order to have a deeper picture of the progression of the pathology, immune histochemical methods forthe detection of vimentin, cytokeratin, progesterone receptor and lymphocyte marker CD3 were used. Finally in order todetect fibrillar collagen we used second harmonic generation (SHG) technique with detects fibrillar collagen without staining, due to intrinsic hyperpolarization ability of this type of collagen, which can be detected by atomic force microscopy. Asa result of our research samples were categorized according to the scale of Keeney and Doig into categories I, IIa, IIb andIII (45, 42, 7.5 and 5% respectively). These samples also were characterized by the methods listed earlier and a result wefound specific staining in 15 samples coming from higher endometrial damage using Masson-...

Complimentary diagnostic tools for endometrosis in biopsies of mares with clinical subfertility

Background: Endometrosis is a multifactorial disease and one of the main causes of infertility in mares, its etiologyand pathogenesis are not completely understood. It is defined as peri glandular and/or stromal endometrial fibrosis withglandular alterations. Due to the few clinical symptoms, besides anamnesis and fertility data, endometrosis requires histological confirmation. The histo-morphology and immune histochemical characteristics of the endometrium vary amongindividuals according to the disease progression. The aim of this research was to combine histology with new immune andhistochemical tools for a more precise detection of fibrotic changes of mares with endometrosis.Materials, Methods & Results: The endometrium of forty thoroughbred mares aged 5-18 years, that did not become pregnant during the last two breeding seasons in a Chilean commercial equine breeding center were biopsied. Samples weresubjected to conventional histopathology with hematoxylin-eosin as well as to specific histological staining using specifictechniques such as Alcian blue and Masson Fontana, aimed to ascertain what types of mucopolysaccharides were presentin those samples. In order to have a deeper picture of the progression of the pathology, immune histochemical methods forthe detection of vimentin, cytokeratin, progesterone receptor and lymphocyte marker CD3 were used. Finally in order todetect fibrillar collagen we used second harmonic generation (SHG) technique with detects fibrillar collagen without staining, due to intrinsic hyperpolarization ability of this type of collagen, which can be detected by atomic force microscopy. Asa result of our research samples were categorized according to the scale of Keeney and Doig into categories I, IIa, IIb andIII (45, 42, 7.5 and 5% respectively). These samples also were characterized by the methods listed earlier and a result wefound specific staining in 15 samples coming from higher endometrial damage using Masson-...(AU)