Figure 6.

Treatment of control ME-SFCs with cytokines induces persistent changes in decidualization capacity reflecting an endometriosis-like phenotype. Healthy control ME-SFCs (n = 9) were treated with (A) vehicle (Veh) and TNF (1 ng/ml) or (B) vehicle (Veh) and IL-1β (1 ng/ml) (n = 8) on days 1 and 3; on day 7 cells were then cultured and passaged in normal growth media. At 1 week (Wk 1), 2 weeks (Wk 2), and 3 weeks (Wk 3) post treatment, each subject's ME-SFCs were assessed for decidualization capacity following treatment with vehicle or cAMP (0.5 mM), as described in Figure 1A. Each subject's data plotted individually are shown in the Supplemental Figure 4. Culture supernatants were analyzed for IGFBP1 (pg/ml) levels by ELISA after 24 hrs. Data are shown as IGFBP1 values for each group's ME-SFCs [vehicle-treated (white box) vs. TNF-treated (gray box), or vehicle-treated (white box) vs. IL-1β-treated (gray box) at weeks 1, 2, or 3 using Tukey box and whisker plots (box = interquartile range; horizontal line = median; upper and lower whiskers indicate range without outliers; outliers = •)]. A persistent reduction in IGFBP1 production over 3 weeks is observed in responses to TNF (***P < 0.001) and IL-1β (**P < 0.01) compared with vehicle as shown in Supplemental Figure 3.