Understanding Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS)

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is an inflammatory disease, originated from lifestyle abuses. Its an endocrine disorder characterized by amenorrhea, anovulation, hirsutism, hyperandrogenism, and hyperprolactinemia.

PCOS can cause infertility, and its co-morbidities include insulin resistance, obesity, cardiovascular problems, among other health issues.

As a result of PCOS, ovulation is impaired; fertilization, and conception is affected; even if implantation occurs, abortion and still birth risks increases. High blood pressure (eclampsia) and the small-for-gestational-age babies (IUGR) can occur. PCOS can cause several pregnancy-related complications as gestational diabetes. So, basically every step of pregnancy is jeopardized by PCOS. It is understandable as a critical and prolonged adaptation like pregnancy, requires the hormonal circuitry to be in good shape. PCOS is teh other name of hormonal imbalance. So, pregnancy becomes unpredictable, and dangerous.

Interventions like oral contraceptive pills, metformin, and hormone therapy are administered to resolve PCOS. Those therapies might alleviate PCOS temporarily or can ease the symptoms. But, those approaches can't eradicate PCOS completely, as long as the body has inflammatory milieu. In inflammatory state, there will still be acidosis, perpetual enzyme activity, and hormones imbalance. Further, the fertility medications come with risk of cancers and metformins can cause gall bladder stones, among other ailments.


So, this author opines, that PCOS, an epidemic endocrinopathy of females of reproductive age, can be vanquished sustainably only by following a low-inflammatory lifestyle. Staying away from endocrine-disrupting chemicals (xeno-estrogens) will serve towards this goal. Its still talked only in hushed tones, but the current repertoire of personal products are more of self-sabotage agents, inducing PCOS in females.

For more information, please read: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29678491/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Danger associated molecular patterns (DAMPs)

Image
Allergen are irritants, offenders or inflammatory agents. They can be pathogens, mutagens, xenobiotics, and pollutants. Danger associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) are altered metabolism products of necrotic or stressed cell, which serve as alarm signals for the innate immune system. When excess, DAMPs can prove lethal due to their signal transduction roles.  Inflammatory agents as arthropod chitin, bacterial pneumolysin are DAMP triggers. In fact, any inflammatory agent, including food preservatives, cosmetics, pesticides, polluted air,  can lead to DAMP generation. These generate DAMPs, which in turn create a pro-inflammatory state. Some well-studied DAMPs include uric acid, creatinine, ferritin, extracellular ATP, HSPs, amyloid ß, S100, HMGB1, and ECM proteins. ECM proteins as elastin, fibronectin, laminin, collagen have been identified as DAMPs. The DAMPs such as S100 and chromogranin A are already known as cancer biomarkers, so other cancer markers such as a-fetoprotein (AFP), BC
Read more

Microbial biosurfactants for oil spill remediation

Image
The crude oils are viscous hydrocarbons. During transportation through waterways,  sometimes oil spill occurs, which cause environmental disasters. Among others, Exxon Valdez in Alaska (1989), Deepwater Horizon/BP well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico (2010) are major oil-spill-related eco-disasters of the past decades. The viscous oil forming a gooey film on the water surface choke aquatic life, to death and ruin the ecological balance in the affected areas. The chemical and mechanical ways of oil spill remediation is effective, but has its own issues. So, lately biosurfactant-producing bacteria and fungi are being explored. Biosurfactants are amphiphilic compounds capable of reducing interfacial tension, dispersing the oil particles, and degrading into non-toxic debris. Among the microbes, only Pseudomonas, Bacillus, and Candida have shown much promise.  Of all the candidates, rhamnolipid, sophorolipid and surfactin have been characterized well. Biosurfactants are the same compounds use
Read more

Mushroom polysaccharides as therapeutics

Image
Mushroom polysaccharides have shown antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, antidiabetic, antimicrobial, and antilipemic to immunomodulatory properties. The ß-glucan, a component of fungal cell wall, has proven its therapeutic relevance. The variants of ß-glucans include pleuran from Pleurotus , lentinan from Lentinus , schizophyllan from Schizophyllum , grifolan from Grifola etc. Some ß-glucans are bound to proteins, as proteoglycan, such as PSK or krestin from Trametes versicolor . Beta-glucans interact with receptors of macrophages, and dendritic cells. These glucans bind to the membrane pattern recognition receptors, TLRs and dectin-1, inducing innate immune activity. On attachment to the ß-glucan, dectin-1 is phosphorylated by tyrosine kinases, and induces an intracellular signaling cascade. The recognition of the glucan by the macrophage triggers proinflammatory cytokine production such as tumor necrosis factor (TNF-a) and various interleukins (ILs). So, the pharmacological
Read more