The quality of life of women suffering from polycystic ovary syndrome

Purpose: To assess how certain clinical symptoms of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) affect the quality of life of women, their activity, and their sexual lives.Materials and methods: The World Health Organization quality of life questionnaire (WHOQOL-Bref) was used to assess the quality of life and health of 78 women diagnosed with PCOS, and the female sexual function questionnaire -28 (FSQ-28) was used to assess their sexual activity and associated disorders.Results: Among three groups of women with varying body mass indexes and aged26.93 years on average, significant differences (p<0.05) were found in quality of life. In individual domains of the WHOQOL-Bref, the median score of women with obesity was lower than that of women with normal body weight or with overweight. Women with symptoms of hirsutism showed lower quality of life than women without these symptoms, while womenwho had undergone treatment for 4–6 years experienced significantly worse quality of life than those who had undergone therapy for less than 3 or more than 6 years. In the various domains of sexual response, regression analysis showed a positive correlation (p <0 .05) between better quality of life and women’s sexual activity.Conclusions: Clinical symptoms of PCOS such as obesity and hirsutism affect women’s quality of life, as does the length of infertility treatment, whereas general quality of life affects the occurrence of disorders in women at particular stages of sexual response.