New Delhi, May 26
Polycystic Ovary Syndrome or PCOS, a common endocrine disorder in women, can affect attention and other cognitive abilities, according to a study by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay on Monday.
Women with PCOS often suffer from irregular or absent periods, polycystic ovaries, and increased levels of male hormone (androgen).
While previous research showed an increased level of anxiety and depression among women with PCOS, the new study focussed on attention -- the precursor for all vital cognitive processing such as receiving, understanding, and making sense of the information.
Maitreyi Redkar and Prof Azizuddin Khan from the Psychophysiology Laboratory, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the IIT Bombay assessed two groups of participants -- 101 women with PCOS and 72 healthy women.
The team mapped their hormonal levels before the study and subjected them to attention tasks. They found that PCOS are slower to react and more easily distracted than their healthy counterparts.
Women with PCOS showed over a 50 per cent slower response and made about 10 per cent more errors than the healthy ones in the focused attention test.
Similarly, PCOS women performed about 20 per cent slowly, with 3 per cent extra errors in the divided attention task, the researchers said.