Pregnancy Outcomes for Women with PCOSI interviewed the lead researcher of an interesting study on pregnancy outcomes for woman with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.  This study has not yet been published.  This study stands out because of it’s size (3,700 woman with PCOS) and the inclusion of woman with mild and moderate PCOS.  Past studies have been considerable smaller and looked at woman who were seeking infertility treatment.  This study was conducted in Sweden which has a National Medical Birth Registry making this type of research possible.  This study looked at all births and then selected woman with a diagnosis of PCOS, which included woman in infertility treatment and woman who conceived spontaneously.  Although ten times more likely to seek infertility treatment than the control group, only 13.7% of the PCOS woman in this study had sought infertility treatment.  Sixty-five percent of the woman in the study were overweight or obese. The study found that compared to woman without PCOS, woman with PCOS were:

  • 3.65 times more likely to develop gestational diabetes
  • 2 times more likely to develop preeclampsia
  • 2.55 times more likely to deliver pre week 32
  • 1.69 times more likely to deliver via cesarean section

The researcher speculated that these outcomes will be worse in countries without nationalized free health care.  It is unclear at this point whether these outcomes are the result of the PCOS or the weight.  Research is ongoing to answer these questions.  We plan on interviewing the research team for the Creating a Family show when this research in published.

Image credit: WhimsicalMiss