Study concearning older women with PCOS and fertility

GOOD NEWS!! As Women w/ PCOS get Older, Chance of Pregnancy May Get HIGHER!!

Youthful infertility balanced by late-blooming ovaries
04 March 2009 by Aria Pearson
Magazine issue 2697.

YOUNG women with fertility problems caused by polycystic ovary syndrome may have reason to take heart. Over a lifetime their chances of having children appear just as good as other women's, perhaps because egg production increases as they grow older.

About 7 per cent of reproductive-age women have PCOS, which features irregular periods, high levels of male hormones and greater numbers of developing follicles, or cysts, on the surface of their ovaries. In a normal ovary, a few follicles appear each month, one or two of which mature and release an egg; the rest die off. Women with PCOS ovulate less often because their extra follicles interfere with normal hormonal activity and stop follicles maturing past a certain stage. This is how PCOS lowers fertility.

Now it looks like that is not the end of the story. Miriam Hudecova and colleagues at Uppsala University in Sweden interviewed 91 women who were 35 or older and had been diagnosed with PCOS when younger. They found the women had undergone just as many pregnancies and borne as many babies, on average, as PCOS-free women of the same age. Some of the women with PCOS had been treated for infertility, but more than two-thirds had become pregnant without such help.

Hudecova also examined most of the women and found that the ovaries of the older women with PCOS showed signs of being more active, with better hormone levels and more eggs available, than those of control women of the same age (Human Reproduction, DOI: 10.1093/humrep/den482).

"As women with polycystic ovarian syndrome get older the chance of getting pregnant may actually be higher," says Hudecova.

There may be an explanation for this. As women age, fewer follicles are produced each month, and in most this reduces fertility. With PCOS, however, fewer follicles may have the opposite effect: it may stop the hormonal interference and cause follicles to release eggs normally.

The hypothesis is backed up by other studies that have shown that the menstrual cycles of women with PCOS tend to become more regular as they age (Human Reproduction, vol 15, p 24). Marcelle Cedars, a reproductive endocrinologist at the University of California, San Francisco, points out that it also chimes with a recent finding that hormone treatments can coax immature follicles to produce eggs.

"They might hit their reproductive peak a little bit later than other women," says Richard Legro, a gynaecologist at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, Pennsylvania. "When we see more data to that effect we'll revise what we tell them.

Here is the study referenced

Long-term follow-up of patients with polycystic ovary syndrome: reproductive outcome and ovarian reserve

M. Hudecova1, J. Holte, M. Olovsson and I. Sundström Poromaa

Department of Women's and Children's Health, Uppsala University 751 85 Uppsala, Sweden

1 Correspondence address. Tel: +46 18 611 57 87; E-mail: miriam.hudecova@kbh.uu.se

BACKGROUND: The purpose of the present study was to examine long-term reproductive outcome and ovarian reserve in an unselected population of women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS).

CONCLUSIONS: Most women with PCOS had given birth, and the rate of spontaneous pregnancies was relatively high. Together with the ultrasound findings and the hormonal analyses, this finding could imply that PCOS patients have a good fecundity, and an ovarian reserve possibly superior to women with normal ovaries.

METHODS: A total of 91 patients with confirmed PCOS and 87 healthy controls were included in the study. Patients had been diagnosed between 1987 and 1995 and at the time of the follow-up, subjects were 35 years of age or older.

RESULTS: Among women who had attempted a pregnancy, 86.7% of PCOS patients and 91.6% of controls had given birth to at least one child. Among PCOS patients who had given birth, 73.6% had done so following a spontaneous conception. Mean ovarian volume and the number of antral follicles in PCOS patients were significantly greater than in control women (P < 0.001, respectively). PCOS patients also had higher serum concentrations of anti-Müllerian hormone and lower follicle-stimulating hormone levels.

Key words: polycystic ovary syndrome/long-term follow-up/ovarian reserve/fecundity/anti-Müllerian hormone

Submitted on October 15, 2008; resubmitted on November 29, 2008; accepted on December 3, 2008

Hum. Reprod. Advance Access published online on January 24, 2009
Human Reproduction, doi:10.1093/humrep/den482