What is "polycystic ovary syndrome" or "PCOS"?

What is "polycystic ovary syndrome" or "PCOS"?

Richard Paulson (Chief, Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility, USC) gives expert video advice on: What factors can prevent me from becoming pregnant?; What are the leading causes of infertility among women?; What causes male infertility? and more...

Polycystic ovary syndrome or PCO, sometimes abbreviated PCOS, is a condition in which the ovary does not release the eggs and in fact, instead of getting rid of them, it collects them and they kind of bunch up in the surface of the ovary. So when the condition was first discovered, the doctors that found it back in the 1930s named Stein and Leventhall noticed that the ovary was filled with little cysts. These were follicles, normally the structures in which the eggs grow. They didn't know that and so they called it polycystic ovaries meaning many cysts noted in the ovaries. And I like to tell my patients that polycystic ovary syndrome patients don't throw away their old eggs. They are very frugal, very thrifty. They hold onto those follicles. So they stay in the surface of the ovary and as a consequence, that ovary hardens up and gets a little larger and makes some more male hormone than it normally would. And so they commonly have problems with hursitism, with extra hair, a little mustache problem maybe not as quite much as mine, maybe a little bit. They are commonly obese, commonly heavy and they do not ovulate. So PCOS, we also call a syndrome of hyperandrogenic chronic anovulation, in other words a condition where the androgen levels, the male hormone levels are high and, at the same time, there is a lack of ovulation which goes on for a very long period of time.