Research database

vestibulomics - Vestibulodynia at high resolution: omics approach to improve diagnosis

Duration:
24 months (2025)
Principal investigator(s):
Project type:
Nationally funded research - PRIN
Funding body:
MINISTERO (MUR)
Project identification number:
2022CLTAYH
PoliTo role:
Partner

Abstract

Vulvooowhat? Despite affecting 1 out of 8 women, vulvodynia is unknown to most people. Vulvodynia is, by recent definition, vulvar pain without an identifiable origin. When the pain and symptoms are limited to the vestibule, this is known as vestibulodynia (VBD), which is the most common form. VBD compromises, partially or totally, the sexual life of women and, depending on the severity, can affect other daily actions, such as urinating, sitting, wearing tights, doing sports, sometimes even walking. The VBD diagnosis is a “diagnosis of exclusion”, meaning that it is diagnosed when all the other possible diseases have been ruled out. VBD is not a rare disease, but it rather is a high frequency women’s health condition, neglected and hard to diagnose due tolack of diagnostic markers. This absence increases the diagnostic delay up to 7 years, thus 1) inducing a chronicization of the symptoms 2) worsening the symptoms and 3) strongly affecting the quality of life of patients, often condemning them to social isolation and severe depression. Taking in consideration previous studies that reported localized metabolomic alterations in vagina and vulvar vestibule rather than systemic effects, it is inexcusable that in the NGS era, there are no studies in the literature of the transcriptome of the vestibular cells. In order to fill this gap, we plan to perform transcriptomic analysis integrated with the state-of-the-art single cell omic analysis on vestibular cells from VBD patients and healthy controls to unbiasedly identify specific VBD markers. Moreover, considering the different pathogenesis and the range of symptoms and severity of the disease, with these markers we also aim at stratifying different groups of VBD, laying the foundation for a real personalized medicine. This analysis has never been performed on VBD patients with this global approach and at such high resolution. The results of our project will help the clinicians in VBD diagnosis, in therapy direction and in the earlier identification of patients with higher risk to develop chronic VBD, thus helping to build a preventive strategy to avoid the progression and chronicization of the disease.

Structures

Partners

  • POLITECNICO DI TORINO
  • UNIVERSITA' DEGLI STUDI DI TORINO - Coordinator

Keywords

ERC sectors

LS2_2 - Transcriptomics

Sustainable Development Goals

Obiettivo 3. Assicurare la salute e il benessere per tutti e per tutte le età

Budget

Total cost: € 229,590.00
Total contribution: € 216,989.00
PoliTo total cost: € 40,000.00
PoliTo contribution: € 40,000.00