Abstract: Endometriosis (EMs) refers to the presence of endometrial tissue outside the uterine cavity. It is a chronic, hormone-dependent gynecological disease affecting millions of women worldwide. Although EMs is benign in morphology, it is characterized by proliferation, infiltration and recurrence of malignant tumors in clinical behavior. There is sufficient evidence to indicate that it can increase the risk of malignant transformation through various mechanisms, but the specific mechanism of the malignant transformation of EMs is unclear currently. There is increasing evidence that epigenetic modification is not only involved in the development of EMs, but also plays an important role in the pathogenesis of malignant transformation of endometriosis, including DNA methylation and demethylation, histone modification, abnormal expression of microRNAs (miRNAs), etc. This paper reviews the research progress on the mechanism of epigenetics and endometriosis associated ovarian cancer (EAOC) in order to find out some risk factors that may be related to the malignant transformation of endometriosis.

Key words: Endometriosis, Epigenesis, genetic, Ovarian neoplasms, Genes, MicroRNAs