title: Are aromatase inhibitors effective in endometriosis treatment?
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Current therapies for endometriosis cannot completely cure the disease, and patients present with high recurrence rates. Novel medical approaches are, therefore, needed.
  
  
  METHODS
  In endometriosis, aromatase was long thought to be involved in the in situ formation of estrogens, leading to a positive feedback loop favoring estrogens, themselves inducing prostaglandin production and inflammation. This hypothesis led to aromatase inhibitors (AIs) being proposed as the new medical therapy for endometriosis, as reported in all the studies reviewed here. Recent findings nevertheless indicate that aromatase may be less implicated in endometriosis than previously postulated. More than 10 years after the first successful treatment of a rare and severe case of postmenopausal endometriosis with an AI, there are only three small randomized controlled trials in the literature.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Until recently, AIs were thought to be an alternative to current medical therapies for endometriosis. However, recent findings question their real utility in clinical practice in the context of this disease. Because there is no strong evidence of their efficacy or benefit compared to other molecules in existing clinical trials, AIs need to be investigated further in well-designed studies to confirm/disprove their hypothetical impact on endometriotic lesions.
authors.affiliation: Université Catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherche Expérimentale et Clinique, Department of Gynecology, 1200 Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Sébastien
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Colette
authors.forename: Jacques
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Donnez
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001141:Aromatase / Q000378:metabolism; D047072:Aromatase Inhibitors / Q000494:pharmacology / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D004715:Endometriosis / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000201:enzymology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic / Q000379:methods / Q000639:trends; D015398:Signal Transduction / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology; D016896:Treatment Outcome
chemical_list: D047072:Aromatase Inhibitors; D001141:Aromatase