Dietary phytochemicals for possible preventive and therapeutic option of uterine fibroids: Signaling pathways as target

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• 作者：Md Soriful Islam^a ; ^b ; James H. Segars^c ; Mario Castellucci^a ; ^{m.castellucci@univpm.it} ; Pasquapina Ciarmela^a ; ^d ; ^{p.ciarmela@univpm.it}
• 关键词：Dietary phytochemicals ; Uterine fibroids ; Signaling pathways ; Growth factors ; Medical treatment
• 刊名：Pharmacological Reports
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：February 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：69
• 期：1
• 页码：57-70
• 全文大小：2280 K
• 卷排序：69

文摘

A growing interest has emerged on dietary phytochemicals to control diverse pathological conditions. Unfortunately, dietary phytochemical research in uterine fibroids is still under construction. Uterine fibroids/leiomyomas are benign tumors developing from the myometrium of the uterus in premenopausal women. They may occur in more than 70% of women, and approximately 25% of women show clinically significant symptoms. These include heavy and prolonged menstrual bleeding, pelvic pressure (urinary frequency, incontinence, and difficulty with urination), pelvic pain, pelvic mass, infertility, and reproductive dysfunction. Due to lack of medical treatments surgery has been definitive choice for fibroid management. Moreover, surgery negatively affects women’s quality of life, and its associated cost appears to be expensive. The molecular mechanism of fibroids development and growth is not fully elucidated. However, accumulated evidence shows that several signaling pathways, including Smad 2/3, PI3K/AKT/mTOR, ERK 1/2 and β-catenin are involved in the leiomyoma pathogenesis, indicating that they could serve as targets for prevention and/or treatment of this tumor. Therefore, in this review, we discuss the involvement of signaling pathways in leiomyoma development and growth, and introduce some potential dietary phytochemicals that could modulate those signaling pathways.