Excessive hair growth, acne and infertility are among the symptoms: what is PCOS, the disease Prisca Thevenot suffers from ?

Une femme sur dix souffrirait de ce syndrome. DR

Between 10 and 15% of women are affected by polycystic ovarian syndrome, also called PCOS. A hormonal disease from which government spokesperson Prisca Thevenot suffers, as she recently mentioned.

"I have two healthy boys but for a long time I thought it wouldn't be possible because I’ I have what we call PCOS which is one of the causes of infertility, says Prisca Thevenot.

In a video published this Sunday, May 12 on her X account, the government spokesperson reacted to the announcements made a few days earlier by Emmanuel Macron on birth rates and women's health in the columns of the magazine< em> She.

Prisca Thevenot opened up about her polycystic ovary syndrome, a hormonal disease also known as PCOS.

1 in 10 women affected

"Polycystic ovarian syndrome is considered the most common endocrine disorder worldwide among women of childbearing age", summarized the main federation of American endocrinologists in 2015.

It is difficult to determine the exact frequency of this disorder but estimates are around a tenth of women of childbearing age.

Due to excessively high production of male hormones – androgens – the ovaries experience an accumulation of follicles which disrupt ovulation. It is therefore not a question of cysts, contrary to what the name of the syndrome suggests.

The disorder is also known as Stein-Leventhal syndrome, named after the surgeon who first described it in the 1930s.

Excessive hair growth, overweight and infertility

The effects are very varied. Patients usually have a disrupted menstrual cycle and may have difficulty conceiving. This syndrome is one of the main causes of infertility.

Many patients also suffer from hirsutism, that is to say excessive hair growth, linked to high levels of androgens.

Between the three of them, these elements – presence of follicles in the ovaries; overproduction of androgens characterized in particular by hirsutism; cycle or fertility disorders – allow a diagnosis to be established: it is enough that two of them are present.

This variable clinical picture partly explains why PCOS remains difficult to diagnose and little known to the general public.

D’as many clinical manifestations are not part of the diagnostic criteria in the strict sense, but are often observed in female patients: acne, overweight, hair loss…

Towards a treatment ?

The mechanisms of this syndrome also remain poorly defined. For example, it remains to be determined whether hormonal disturbances originate in the ovaries, the central nervous system, or both.

Significant advances were however made in the 2010s. The researcher Paolo Giacobini has thus, from work on mice and more recently in humans, opened the way towards a better understanding of the hereditary transmission mechanisms of PCOS.

Exposure of the fetus to male hormones during pregnancy thus seems to favor the appearance of the syndrome in adulthood. In the long term, this research provides avenues for reflection towards a treatment that would target this syndrome at the root.

For now, however, we are far from it and the only treatments aim only to respond to the symptoms. Thus, contraceptive pills are frequently prescribed to combat hirsutism or other symptoms linked to hyperandrogenism.

In the event of infertility and the desire to have a child, several treatments can be considered, such as ovarian stimulation, ovarian surgery by "drilling", or, in last resort, in vitro fertilization.