Causes of PCOS

Brief knowledge about causes of PCOS

I'm Dr. Sunita Gupta. I'm Consultant Gynecologist at Max Hospitals, Saket, and Panchsheel. Today I'm going to talk about Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.

Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome consists of three symptoms. One is Anovulation. Anovulation means there is no egg formulation in the ovary. Second is Hyperandrogenism which an is excess of male hormones in the body, and third is Cyst in the body which is visible in the ultrasound. So the main symptoms of Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome are obesity. Most of the patients of Polycystic ovary have obesity. Obesity worsens the Polycystic Ovary Syndrome and it is a vicious cycle and Polycystic Ovarian people have more obesity because what happens is that the female hormones get deposited in the fat and that's why there is deficiency of female hormone in blood of Polycystic patients and all that's why the male hormones starts dominating the system and all the male symptoms start appearing like acne, hair on the face or on he body, excessive hair on the body, irregular cycles. So, obesity is the main culprit in the patients. So, if they lose weight then all the symptoms regress because the hormone in the fat goes back to the blood and all the hormonal imbalance gets corrected and all the acne and facial hair everything will disappear.

Second thing is acne which is very common in Polycystic Ovarian patients. So many times patient go to a skin specialist for acne treatment and then they discover they have Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. So for acne is again because of male hormones in the blood and sometimes it a response to local applications which the skin specialist gives to them. But sometimes they need to take hormonal treatment. We give the oral contraceptive pills to these patients for correcting the acne. Basically the oral contraceptive pills have perfect combination of female hormones which your body, ovary should be producing. But the in case of Polycystic ovaries the ovary is producing more of male hormones, little bit more male hormones.

So once we give pills from outside the body gets the signal that there are enough hormone in the blood and there is no need to make any more hormone. So the ovaries stops working and the male hormones also stop getting formed and all the symptom then gets regressed till the patient is on he pills. Once the patients stops the pills again the ovaries take over, again the male hormone starts getting formed by the ovaries and again the symptoms may slowly appear. So once the patient has been kept on OCPs for 6 months she may become alright for 1-2 years and again the symptoms may come back.

So Polycystic Ovary disease is a not disease which can be cured by a 6 months treatment or a one week treatment like any fever or antibiotic you give and the patient becomes alright. This is a lifestyle disease which is going to be there for the rest of your life. You can keep it under control by having a healthy lifestyle or maybe taking some medication if required or you if let it go if you allow yourself to gain weight then it can become worse and get out of hand.

If you want to know anything more about PCOS you can contact me on Librate.com or Max hospital, Sanket and Panchsheel.