“What am I doing?”
A question I usually ask myself in a moment of crushing self-realisation after
drinking a not insignificant amount of a famous brand of bourbon and embarrassing
myself in front of my peers on a night out.
But in this
instance, the question ‘what am I doing?’ refers to the subject matter of my
research. I’ve been doing my PhD for just over a year now and have only
recently found my stride with it. Scientific research can be a perplexing
venture; I’ve changed focus more times than I care to count. Of course a big
part of that is my own tendency to pursue new avenues of interest like a dog
being thrown a bucket of tennis balls. My main interest has and always will be
endometriosis and working at this university has given me lots of opportunities
(too many opportunities actually, not that that’s a bad thing) to investigate
endo in different ways. Every new idea I have, there are the facilities here to
investigate it, like being a kid in a candy store, but instead of candy store
it’s a vast scientific research institute.
But anyway,
enough of that rambling, I was talking about being focussed. My research is examining
the role that fatty acids play in regulating inflammation in endometriosis.
‘Fatty acids’ is a bit of a vague term so I’ll clarify that first. You’ve
probably heard of Omega-6 and Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids; different
foodstuffs like to advertise that they are ‘rich in Omega-3s’ or something
along those lines. These include essential fatty acids such as eicosapentaenoic
acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), which fall under the Omega-3
category. Then there is arachidonic acid and linoleic acid which fall under the
Omega-6 category.
We get a lot
of these fatty acids from our food, but it’s what our body does with them
that’s important. When our body takes in
these fatty acids, they are incorporated into the outer layer of our cells (the
cell membrane) which acts as a storage space for them. The stored fatty acids
can then be release from the membrane and converted into a whole plethora of
different products by different enzymes, which can serve a whole manner of
different functions (below is a diagram that summarises the process). In one
sense this is why maintaining a healthy diet is important, it means you get the
right balance of these fatty acids. From the other perspective, it may not
matter how good your diet is, because your body (or certain parts of it) may
not process the fatty acids correctly due to the presence/absence of certain
enzymes or receptors for these fatty acids.
One function
regulated by the products of omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids is inflammation,
which is very important when talking about endometriosis. Your body treats
endometriosis very much like a wound, but a wound it can’t heal, so it releases
a number of chemicals which ramp up the inflammatory response near the disease.
Some of the products of fatty acid metabolism are key players in regulating
this inflammatory response. In addition, this rogue inflammation is thought to
contribute to the severe pain symptoms with which so many women with endo
suffer.
You’ll
notice that one of the products of Omega-6 fatty acids, the 2 series prostaglandins,
are highlighted in red. This is because they are the only group of fatty acid
products that we know the function of in the reproductive system in any great
detail. There are numerous members of the series 2 prostaglandin family, but
I’ve selected prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) and F2 alpha (PGF2a) as they are known to
produce a strong inflammatory response. All of the others (don’t worry what the
acronyms stand for, we’ll be drowning in syllables if I put the full names in) we
don’t have any idea what roles they play, if any, in the normal function of the
female reproductive system and what the consequences would be if they went
awry.
So the first
part of my research is to investigate which of these fatty acid products are
present in the endometrium. This is actually pretty exciting because it means
making genuine discoveries. As I mentioned above we don’t know which of these
fatty acid products are present in the endometrium, so discovering that will be
something no-one has ever done before, exactly the type of thing us science
geeks get excited about.
The second
part will be to find out what differences there are, if any, in the fatty acid
products from the endometrium of women with and women without endometriosis.
Hopefully, finding fatty acids that are either much higher or much lower amounts
in endometriosis patients will give some indication as to which of them are
important. Because we don’t really know what these fatty acid products do in
the uterus there’s no telling how important they may be; they might control
inflammation, they might be important for hormone regulation, they may even be
involved in fertility, or they may just be inconsequential. No matter what the
outcome that is pretty much what I’m doing and hopefully it will lead to
discoveries that will help us better understand (and better treat) the symptoms
of endometriosis.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.