Mother and daughter among trial participants after years of symptoms
Three studies led by Dr. Melanie Cree are testing whether GLP-1 obesity medications may improve insulin resistance, hormone balance and ovulation in women with PMOS, a hormonal condition affecting an estimated 1 in 8 women worldwide. Cree said the drugs appear to work not only by promoting weight loss but also by improving the insulin resistance, hormone imbalance and irregular ovulation that are central to the condition.
“We need to do a better job taking care of it,” Cree said. “We are finding them incredibly effective and really exciting for improving symptoms in women with this condition.”
The disorder, formerly called polycystic ovary syndrome, was renamed earlier this year — to polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome, or PMOS — to shift the focus away from ovaries and cysts and toward the broader hormonal and metabolic disruptions that define it.
For Charlotte Touzalin, an 18-year-old college student from Colorado, the promise of the new research arrived after years of unexplained symptoms that echoed her mother’s experience. Touzalin began struggling with weight gain, abnormal periods and unwanted facial hair as a young teenager — the same puzzling symptoms that had plagued Anne Schultz for decades and that no doctor could piece together.
“I’d go home and I’d cry,” Touzalin said. “I didn’t understand why all this weight was coming back or why my friends didn’t have to shave their faces and I had to.”
Both mother and daughter were eventually diagnosed with PMOS. But unlike her mother, Touzalin is beginning young adulthood with new hope after taking part in a study testing GLP-1 drugs as a treatment. Cree has led three studies testing GLP-1 drugs for PMOS, including the one Touzalin joined.
The findings add to a small but growing body of research suggesting that GLP-1 drugs may have applications beyond their established use in obesity, with the PMOS studies pointing to one such possibility.