Dr. Thaïs Aliabadi

It's not a little bit of this.

And these are patients, patients who are listening right now to me, they're going to say, yes, I have this.

I have every symptom and I put a check in front of it.

The problem with PCOS is there are four different phenotypes of PCOS.

That's why it's so confusing for doctors to diagnose PCOS.

The most common classic

phenotype is a patient that has all three.

PCOS looking ovaries on ultrasound, elevated testosterone symptoms or high testosterone or androgens in the blood, and irregular period, and irregular period.

The second type B patients have the high androgen symptoms.

They do have dysfunctional ovulation with irregular periods.

But these patients have normal ovaries on ultrasound.

So you can't, in this group of patients, you can't do an ultrasound and say your ovaries are not PCOS looking so you don't have it.

Then the third phenotype is the ovulatory PCOS.

It gets very confusing.

This group of PCOS patients actually ovulate at least sometimes because 70% to 80% of PCOS patients don't ovulate.

72%.

to 80% do not ovulate, even when they have regular cycles.

So of the 20, 30% who ovulate, you need to ovulate to get pregnant, this C phenotype, these patients are ovulating sometimes.

with regular cycles.

So these are PCOS patients who go to the doctor.