Reply: Where are we in understanding the natural history of polycystic ovary syndrome? A systematic review of longitudinal cohort studies.

Abstract

Dear Sir, We write in response to the letters entitled ‘Women self-reporting PCOS symptoms should not be overlooked’, by Piltonen et al. (2022) and ‘Exploring the natural history of polycystic ovary syndrome: still a long road to traverse’, by Sahoo (2022) regarding our recent systematic review on understanding the natural history of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) (Kiconco et al., 2022). Importantly, our systematic review aimed to capture highly characterized cohorts to facilitate evidence synthesis, meta-analysis and ultimately individual patient data meta-analysis. We captured 21 longitudinal cohort studies that specifically reported features encompassed in either the 2003 Rotterdam (Rotterdam ESHRE/ASRM-Sponsored, PCOS Consensus Workshop Group, 2004) or the original National Institutes of Health (NIH) (Zawadski and Dunaif, 1992) diagnostic criteria. This was in line with the International Evidence-based Guideline for the assessment and management of PCOS (Teede et al., 2018) and the PCOS core outcomes set. The latter recommends key outcome measures to be reported in PCOS-related studies with the goal of improving quality of reporting and facilitating evidence synthesis (Al Wattar et al., 2020).