Effect of an intrauterine device on the gene expression profile of the endometrium.

The human endometrium acquires the ability to allow embryo attachment just for a specific period of time during each menstrual cycle. Understanding of the opposite functional status, referred to as refractoriness, can potentially be used to improve receptivity in infertile patients or as an interceptive approach to prevent gestation.The objective of the study was to analyze the endometrial gene expression profile induced by an inert intrauterine device (IUD) at the time of implantation.We used a microarray containing more than 16,000 cDNAs to investigate the gene expression profile of receptive vs. refractory endometrium in the same women induced by the presence of an IUD. We compared the g…