Spontaneous endometriosis in rhesus macaques: evidence for a genetic association with specific Mamu-A1 alleles

Abstract. Endometriosis is a poorly understood common debilitating women's reproductive disorder resulting from proliferative and ectopic endometrial tissue associated with variable clinical symptoms including dysmenorrhea (painful menstrual periods), dyspareunia (pain on intercourse), female infertility, and an increased risk of malignant transformation. The rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) develops a spontaneous endometriosis that is very similar to that seen in women. We hypothesized that specific major histocompatibility complex (MHC) alleles may contribute to the pathogenesis of endometriosis. As part of a collaboration between the Biomedical Primate Research Centre (BPRC) in the Netherlands and the New England Primate Research Center (NEPRC) in the United States, we analyzed DNA sequences of MHC class I (Macaca mulatta, Mamu-A1) and class II (Mamu-DRB) alleles from rhesus macaques with endometriosis and compared the allele frequencies with those of age-matched healthy macaques. We demonstrate that two MHC class I alleles are overrepresented in diseased macaques compared to controls: Mamu-A1*001, 33.3 % in BPRC animals with endometriosis vs. 11.6 % in healthy macaques (p =  0.007), and Mamu-A1*007, 21.9 % NEPRC rhesus macaques vs. 6.7 %, (p =  0.003). We provide evidence that select MHC class I alleles are associated with endometriosis in rhesus macaques and suggest that the disease pathogenesis contribution of MHC class I warrants further research.