imnotevilimjustwrittenthatway:
The most common cause of female infertility – polycystic ovary syndrome – may be caused by a hormonal imbalance before birth. The finding has led to a cure in mice, and a drug trial is set to begin in women later this year.
Polycystic ovary syndrome affects up to one in five women worldwide, three-quarters of whom struggle to fall pregnant. The condition is typically characterised by high levels of testosterone, ovarian cysts, irregular menstrual cycles, and problems regulating sugar, but the causes have long been a mystery. “It’s by far the most common hormonal condition affecting women of reproductive age but it hasn’t received a lot of attention,” says Robert Norman at the University of Adelaide in Australia.
THIS IS UNUSUAL CONTENT FOR MY BLOG BUT
Y’ALL THIS IS HUGE
!!!!!
Just going to point out that as much as this excerpt here describes it as affecting “fertility” and oh woe, they can’t get pregnant as easy…uh, it’s also something that can make them fucking miserable and POTENTIALLY KILL THEM
Here’s the thing: ovaries normally do produce cysts. They’re supposed to! To an extent. They produce like, a tiny number, maybe one, each menstrual cycle, because the egg that is ready to be hypothetically fertilized, is PUSHED OUT to the fallopian tube, by an actual cyst.
This is the normal process, in the “4 out of 5″ women who don’t have PCOS.
In PCOS, though, my understanding is that the cyst production does not happen in this nice, orderly fashion, only happening approximately every few weeks; instead, it goes haywire and happens all over the place and WAY too much (hence “polycystic”).
Left unchecked, this can cause the organ to become damaged, it can cause it to swell and even press on other things in the abdomen and put OTHER parts of the body at risk, can cause all sorts of awful things.
IIRC ( @tekka-wekka I think you know more about this than I do, by all means please correct me if I’m wrong about any of it?) it tends to cause a lot of pain or heavy bleeding during many people’s menstrual cycles and, as noted, causes them to be more irregular – so it’s basically a disability, one that can be LIFE-THREATENING.
And guess what the main treatment for PCOS is, to keep the cysts in line and regulate the menstrual cycle properly?
Hormone-regulating pills.
You know, the ones normally labeled “birth control”.
This was what Sandra Fluke was testifying about a few years back, during health care debates, by the way. She had a friend who had EXACTLY this condition, and the fact that Georgetown’s student health coverage would NOT cover her “birth control” medication meant that she went without it for three months…and her ovaries, filled with cysts, enlarged so much that she required EMERGENCY SURGERY (to remove them entirely, IIRC).
Which is why Sandra Fluke was FIRMLY arguing for increased access to “birth control” medications; because leaving aside questions of autonomy, it’s an actual literal life-or-death health necessity for many people! Such as those with PCOS in specific!
But I digress.
My point is: this is a condition that goes beyond “fertility” issues; it requires a LOT of people to go on pretty much (IIRC) permanent hormonal regulation to carefully regulate their menstrual cycles in order to NOT DIE. Because, left untreated, it can, in fact, literally pose that risk. (And depending on the specific hormonal birth control in question – this may have the trade off of things like a higher stroke risk, so that’s…that’s a thing, too, oops)
So uh. This?
This is REALLY good news.
But not JUST for folks with PCOS who want to have biological children; it’s literally just good news in general, because this could be LIFE-SAVING research??
I just wanted to point that out because, like, I don’t think a lot of people are aware of PCOS and how it can potentially KILL YOU, and there’s a lot of misconceptions about ovarian/uterine health in general, and like… and I think some folks might scroll past this thinking it’s mostly about “fertility”?
When it’s actually a condition that impacts WAY more than that, and chances are very very good you actually know someone with this condition, whether you realize it or not.
Reblogging for the additional info. Most of the folks I know with this don’t give a shit about fertility. They just want to stop needing S5+ painkillers to function at least 25% of the time.
I just want to add that this research is preliminary and is unlikely to be the sole cause of PCOS. And speaking as someone that has it, I also want to say that PCOS and endometriosis (another hideously painful endocrine condition) are primarily diagnosed differently based on whether people have very infrequent menstruation (PCOS) or very frequent bleeding (endo).
PCOS also does come with a higher risk of endometrial cancer and ovarian cancer if left untreated.
PCOS also comes with the symptom of inability to lose weight and/or inexplicable weight gain, so if you think you have it beware of bad weight science and ‘lose weight even though your disorder means you can’t’ type bullshit. For citations and studies about this see @bigfatscience
If you think you might have PCOS please look up other symptoms and talk to a doctor or a gynecologist about this if you can at all. It is treatable and it absolutely can seriously fuck with you in a lot of ways that you don’t even necessarily know are fucked-up if you’re suffering for years. On treatment you can have far less painful menstruation and/or no menstruation at all, as well as a serious reduction to a complete extinguishing of other symptoms.
Oh, and by the way, the higher stroke risk is for taking pills containing estrogen specifically–if you’re under forty and have migraines with aura then estrogen-containing medications do increase the risk of ischemic stroke. This can be solved by taking pills that only contain progesterone, which can also treat and control PCOS symptoms!
As someone who just recently got diagnosed a couple months ago, this is big news and this post is also very informative
Men can get it, too! And I mean people without uteruses. It just presents differently. Turns out it’s NOT just a uterine/ovarian disease.
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