Endocrine Abstracts

: Polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) affects 6–10% of women of childbearing age. The pathophysiology of PCOS is related to increased insulin resistance (IR). Obesity, the leading cause of high IR, is present in 50% of women with PCOS, but lean women with PCOS also have higher IR than women with the same BMI without PCOS. Recent studies have correlated high IR with presence of thyroid nodules (TN), which motivated us to evaluate the occurrence of TN in patients with PCOS. 50 women with 18–45 years with PCOS according to the Rotterdam criteria were submitted to: evaluation of BMI and presence of acanthosis nigricas (AN): laboratory tests for blood glucose and thyroid hormones; and thyroid ultrasound (made by the same examiner with the same device). Laboratory and imaging results were compared between patients with (group 1) and without (group 2) TN through the Student’s T-test. The prevalence of TN was 36%. We observed that weight, BMI and glycemia were significantly higher in group 1 with the following p-values, respectively: 0.003; 0.01; and 0.028. The prevalence of AN was also higher in group 1 (50×37.5%). Among patients with TN, 13 had a single nodule and only 5 had multinodular disease (2 patients with 4 and 3 with 3), totalizing 30 nodules identified. 13 of these were ≤1 cm and 7 were suspicious, indicating that further investigation would be necessary. Our prevalence of TN was higher than that found by other authors in obese women at the same age without PCOS (21.4%). Although prevalence of TN increases with age, a Finnish study evaluating healthy middle-aged women (49–58 years) also showed a lower prevalence (30.69%). These data suggest that patients with PCOS have a higher risk of developing TN.