Verity - sharing the truth about PCOS

Hello and thank you for dropping by the research section of the Verity website.  

At Verity, we are very committed to helping research into PCOS and we find a very effective way of doing this is to help recruit participants for studies.  If you would like to help further research into PCOS, then please always take time out of your visit to the Verity website, to check out this page.  Here is where you will find recruitment requests for the latest research being carried out in relation to PCOS.

If you match the criteria for any of the studies and would like to help then please follow the information in the relevant advert.  If you do not match the criteria for a particular study please do not forget, you can still help by maybe mentioning this page to a friend or relative you think may be interested.  

Suspecting that you may have or being diagnosed with PCOS raises many questions about appearance, physical symptoms, fertility, emotional issues, long-term health concerns and what this all means for the choices we make from this point on. Confusion is often made worse by a lack of agreement between different doctors and between doctors and their patients.

I would like as many women as possible, from multiple discussion forums, to complete a short, on-line questionnaire that deals with the ways in which decision-making is approached in all areas of day-to-day life. All members and visitors are welcome to participate, from those that have never posted to those who post regularly. Completing the questionnaire takes around 10 minutes. All identifying details will be changed and respondents are assured of anonymity.

There is no obligation to participate further. The questionnaire will ask whether you are willing to take part in future interviews. It is planned to hold in-depth interviews via email with around 30 women who responded to the questionnaire and who consented to further interview. Individual histories and especially PCOS health and social experiences (including relationships with partners, friends and family, employment issues, fertility issues as well as experiences of medical consultations) will be gathered during follow-up interviews. There will also be opportunity to discuss the role that Verity and the newsgroup have played.

Link to survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QVMXV5W

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is the commonest hormone condition in women of reproductive age. In addition to its well-recognised effects on weight gain, excessive hair growth and infertility, it is becoming increasingly clear that PCOS is associated with long-term health risks including diabetes and arterial (blood vessel)/heart muscle disease, both of which are related to impaired action of insulin throughout the body, also known as insulin resistance.

There is increasing evidence that a major underlying cause of insulin resistance is a build up of a particular type of fat around the bowel called visceral fat. There have not been any studies on the relationship between visceral fat and arterial disease (or 'stiffness') or heart muscle function in young women with PCOS, but this may be an importnat area to study as research in middle-aged women with PCOS has shown that visceral fat is associated with increased 'furring' of the arteries in the neck, which is a marker for early heart disease.

We aim to measure visceral fat area in women with PCOS and relate this to arterial stiffness and heart muscle function.

Subjects will have blood and urine tests, an oral glucose tolerance test, CT and DEXA scans to assess body fat distribution, heart ultrasound scan and non-invasive studies of blood vessels to assess cardiovascular health.

If you wish to know more about participating in this study, please contact: Dr Rosie Hocking at hockingrk1@cardiff.ac.uk

Thank you,

Dr Rosie Hocking