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Acne, excessive hair growth, infertility… Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) poisons the lives of many women. After years of research, we still do not have a treatment to specifically address it, although a recent study gives some hope of achieving it.
“There are currently only limited options for treating PCOS.“, underlines this study conducted by a Chinese team and published in mid-June in the prestigious journal Science. This work finally provides a promising lead in the treatment of this syndrome, which receives relatively little media coverage even though it affects around one in ten women and confronts them with a range of often painful and distressing symptoms.
Preliminary but promising results
PCOS is characterized by excessive production of male hormones and the abnormally high presence of follicles – and not cysts as the name suggests – on the ovaries.
Concretely, for many patients this translates into problems with acne, hair loss, excessive hair growth, etc. The syndrome also increases the risk of infertility – even if it does not condemn them to never having a child. children – and promotes diabetes.
Patients are often helpless. The treatments currently prescribed only aim to respond to these symptoms in isolation, for example by compensating for the physical effects by using contraceptive pills loaded with female hormones: estrogen and progesterone.
The study published by Science opens up the possibility of a basic treatment that would directly limit the production of male hormones by the patients’ ovaries. To do this, the researchers used a common antimalarial, artemisinin, and observed an overall improvement in the condition of around twenty patients.
These results have been widely welcomed by the medical community. However, they are only very preliminary: to say whether artemisinin really works against PCOS, it will be necessary to test it on many other patients and compare the results to a placebo.
A better known disorder
Why so much interest at this early stage? It’s because after years of research into PCOS, patients have had little concrete progress that could benefit them.
“There is still much we do not know, but we cannot say that progress is non-existent.“, nuance to AFP the endocrinologist Elisabet Stener-Victorin, one of the world references on PCOS.
On the one hand, the physiological mechanisms of the syndrome are better known. Its diagnosis has also been refined to become more precise. Finally, we identify its threats to health more precisely: this is particularly the case for cardiovascular risks and effects on mental health, which were still neglected a few years ago.
But many vaguenesses remain. For example, we do not know to what extent the syndrome is rooted in the ovaries themselves, or in a dysfunction of the nervous system.
A comprehensive summary was developed last year by international experts to take stock of knowledge on PCOS and guide doctors on the subject. The fact remains that in several respects, it struggles to provide definitive answers.
Thus, there is a consensus on the need to adapt the lifestyle of patients, who are often overweight. But this document also admits that there is a lack of data to know precisely what to recommend in terms of diet and physical activity.
Can the pharmaceutical industry get on board with the topic and provide valuable funding? There are small signs of interest, such as a recent fundraising round by a startup that promises to develop a PCOS-specific infertility response.
This group, May Health, has raised around twenty million euros, notably from the French public bank BpiFrance, to develop an “ovarian rebalancing” device whose effectiveness remains to be proven.
Will other groups follow this example? The context is currently favorable for women’s health, notably with the recent strong media coverage of endometriosis.
“PCOS represents a fairly large population, so in theory an attractive market, especially since it is a therapeutic desert“, admits financial analyst Jamila El Bougrini, a specialist in the pharmaceutical sector, to AFP.
“That being said, it is clear that funding in this area is lower than that allocated to other pathologies with comparable incidences, such as rheumatoid arthritis.“, she concludes, emphasizing once again how metabolic disorders like PCOS represent a challenge for research.