ECE2013 Oral Communications Reproduction (6 abstracts)
Age-related hormonal and metabolic alterations in women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS)
Pekka Pinola 1 , Eszter Vanky 2 , Inger Sundström-Poromaa 3 , Elisabeth Stener-Victorin 4 , Johanna Puurunen 1 , Terhi Piltonen 1 , Katri Puukka 5 , Juha Tapanainen 6 & Laure Morin-Papunen 1
1Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University Hospital of Oulu, Oulu, Finland; 2Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, St Olav’s University Hospital Trondheim, Trondheim, Norway; 3Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, Uppsala, Sweden; 4Department of Physiology/Endocrinology, Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology, Göteborg, Sweden; 5Department of Clinical Chemistry, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland; 6Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
Introduction: PCOS-related hormonal and metabolic alterations seem to persist later in life. The aim was to investigate age-related hormonal and metabolic parameters in PCOS and in healthy women in order to determine cut-off values predicting PCOS.
Subjects and methods: PCOS women and 230 healthy controls were divided accordingly: 18–24, 25–29, 30–34, 35–39, 40–44, 45–49 and >50 years. A particular interest was to analyze serum testosterone (T) levels using the golden standard method, liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS).
Results: In PCOS group, there was a U-shaped pattern (decrease towards menopause and increase thereafter) in serum androgens and free androgen index (FAI) while in controls a significant decrease with age in dehydroepiandrostendione sulphate and androstenedione (A), and an increase in FAI were observed. T and FAI were significantly higher in PCOS compared to controls in age groups 18–38 years and 18–44 years, respectively (P<0.001, BMI adjusted).
Serum insulin levels and HOMA-IR were significantly higher in PCOS in all age groups except 45–49 years however, the differences disappeared after BMI adjustment except in women >50 years (12.9 vs 5.7 mU/l, P=0.02). Triglycerides were higher and HDL tended to be lower in PCOS especially in women <40 years, and hs-CRP levels were increased in women with PCOS <30 years, but these differences disappeared after BMI-adjustment.
The three best predicting factors for PCOS were FAI (≥2.0, OR 8.18), A (≥9.7 nmol/l, OR 6.16) and T (≥1.1 nmol/l, OR 4.17).
Conclusion: The analyses performed with LC-MS confirm the results of earlier studies using RIAs or other older methods, showing that increased serum T levels in PCOS persist until menopause. The results also indicate that FAI and serum androgens serve as the best predictors of PCOS at all ages, while the prediction value of metabolic factors do not perform equally well as they may associate more with obesity than with PCOS per se.
Article tools
My recent searches
My recently viewed abstracts
Authors
Endocrine Abstracts
ISSN 1470-3947 (print) | ISSN 1479-6848 (online)
© Bioscientifica 2024 |
Privacy policy |
Cookie settings
BiosciAbstracts
Bioscientifica Abstracts is the gateway to a series of products that provide a permanent, citable record of abstracts for biomedical and life science conferences.
Find out more