ABSTRACT
<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To investigate the regulatory effect of ligustrazine and Radix Astragalus (Chinese drugs for supplementing qi and activating blood circulation) on uterine mucosa stromal cyto-chemotactic factor RANTES and receptor CCR5 expression.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>The eutopic and ectopic endometrial stromal cells (EMSC) isolated and purified from 10 patients with ovarian endometrial cyst were selected as the experimental group, while those from 10 patients with benign lesion were selected as the control group. After they were intervened by different factors, including astragalus injection (AI), ligustrazine injection (LI), AI + LI, and Danazol, the expression levels of RANTES and CCR5 in the cells were detected by ELISA and RT-PCR.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>RANTES expressions in eutopic and ectopic EMSC were different insignificantly (P > 0.05). The ectopic EMSC RANTES expression was 13.602 +/- 3.358 ng/L and eutopic EMSC RANTES was 12.850 +/- 7.997 ng/L in the positive control group, which was significantly higher than that in the negative control group (both being 0.027 +/- 0.016 ng/L, P <0.05), and the ectopic EMSC expressions after intervened with Chinese drugs were significantly lower than that in the positive control group (P <0.05). CCR5 expression in ectopic EMSC was 0.759 +/- 0.039 ng/L, which was higher than that in eutopic EMSC (0.249 +/- 0.026 ng/L, P <0.05). Ectopic EMSC CCR5 expression was higher in the positive control group than that in the negative control group (0.759 +/- 0.039 ng/L vs 0.478 +/- 0.094 ng/L, P <0.05). Similar situation also was shown between the positive and negative control groups in terms of eutopic EMSC CCR5 expression (0.249 +/- 0.026 ng/L vs 0.131 +/- 0.021 ng/L, P < 0.01), and the expression was significantly lower in all the Chinese drugs treated EMSC groups as compared with that in the positive control group (P < 0.01).</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>CCR5 expression was higher in ectopic EMSC than that in eutopic EMSC. Ligustrazine and Radix Astragalus could down-regulate the auto-secretion of RANTES and CCR5 in patients with endometriosis.</p>