Endocrine Abstracts

Objective: PCOS may be associated with an increased risk of endometrial hyperplasia (EH) and endometrial cancer (EC), but substantial evidence remains to be established. We investigated the prevalence of EH and EC in a well-characterized group of women with PCOS and/or clinical/biochemical hyperandrogenism.

Design: Retrospective, trans-sectional study.

Setting: Out-patient clinic at the Departments of Endocrinology and Gynecology, Odense University Hospital, Denmark.

Population: Nine hundred and sixty three premenopausal women consecutively referred with the diagnoses PCOS and/or hirsutism during 1997–2008.

Methods: All women underwent a standardized evaluation program. In 2011, The Danish Data Bank of Pathology was used to identify patients with endometrial histology diagnoses (year range of diagnosis 1982–2011).

Main outcome measures: Histology diagnoses, demographic variables.

Results: EH was diagnosed in 10 (1.0%) women and EC in 1 (0.1%) woman. The median BMI in the EH/EC group was 30.6 kg/m² compared to 26.8 kg/m² in the total cohort. There were no differences between the cases and total cohort in terms of individual Rotterdam Criteria. In Denmark, 70 yearly cases of EC are diagnosed in women 40–55 years corresponding to a prevalence of 0.4% in the corresponding time period.

Conclusion: The results of the present study do not suggest a higher prevalence of EC in women with PCOS and/or clinical/biochemical hyperandrogenism compared to the general population.

Declaration of interest: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest that could be perceived as prejudicing the impartiality of the research project.

Funding: This research did not receive any specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sector.