You don't have PCOS. Even if your doctor said you do
That's because the condition was renamed today: PCOS is now PMOS. It's not a rebrand. That one letter matters more than you might expect! PCOS - Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome is out. It's now PMOS: polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome. The old name pointed everyone at the wrong thing. "Polycystic" suggested cysts on the ovaries. Most people with the condition don't actually have cysts. So patients got dismissed and doctors looked for the wrong signs. The WHO estimates 70% of people with the condition remain undiagnosed. 70 percent?! This news was published this morning byThe Lancet Group, presented at the European Congress of Endocrinology in Prague, and the result of 11 years of consultation with 22,000 doctors, researchers, patients, and advocates. It could make a massive difference. The new name puts metabolic dysfunction and the endocrine system driving it front and centre and I think the name highlights the problem in a way that should make people aware how much it's usually a metabolic problem. Insulin resistance is central to PMOS. Not universal; research suggests a meaningful minority of cases don't involve it. But for the majority, the condition is rooted in disrupted insulin signalling: the kind that affects weight, energy, fertility, skin, mood, and sleep, often all at once, and often in women whose blood glucose looks perfectly normal on a standard test. Standard testing misses early insulin resistance routinely. The symptoms get written off; attributed to stress, or age, or just how things are. This renaming is medicine formally acknowledging that a condition affecting roughly 1 in 8 women of reproductive age is, at its foundation, a metabolic dysfunction. I've been working with people for years who were diagnosed with PCOS and never told insulin resistance might be at the root of it. I'm hoping the new name means people will look at the things that affect their metabolism when they're looking for a solution.
That's because the condition was renamed today: PCOS is now PMOS. It's not a rebrand. That one letter matters more than you might expect!
PCOS - Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome is out. It's now PMOS: polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome.
The old name pointed everyone at the wrong thing. "Polycystic" suggested cysts on the ovaries. Most people with the condition don't actually have cysts. So patients got dismissed and doctors looked for the wrong signs. The WHO estimates 70% of people with the condition remain undiagnosed. 70 percent?!
This news was published this morning by The Lancet Group, presented at the European Congress of Endocrinology in Prague, and the result of 11 years of consultation with 22,000 doctors, researchers, patients, and advocates.
It could make a massive difference.
The new name puts metabolic dysfunction and the endocrine system driving it front and centre and I think the name highlights the problem in a way that should make people aware how much it's usually a metabolic problem.
Insulin resistance is central to PMOS. Not universal; research suggests a meaningful minority of cases don't involve it. But for the majority, the condition is rooted in disrupted insulin signalling: the kind that affects weight, energy, fertility, skin, mood, and sleep, often all at once, and often in women whose blood glucose looks perfectly normal on a standard test.
Standard testing misses early insulin resistance routinely. The symptoms get written off; attributed to stress, or age, or just how things are.
This renaming is medicine formally acknowledging that a condition affecting roughly 1 in 8 women of reproductive age is, at its foundation, a metabolic dysfunction.
I've been working with people for years who were diagnosed with PCOS and never told insulin resistance might be at the root of it. I'm hoping the new name means people will look at the things that affect their metabolism when they're looking for a solution.