Mumbai: Women diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) may experience noticeable difficulties in attention and other cognitive functions, according to a new study conducted by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay.
The study highlights how this common endocrine disorder can impact mental performance in subtle but significant ways.
PCOS affects one in five women of reproductive age and is marked by symptoms such as irregular or absent periods, polycystic ovaries, and elevated levels of male hormones called androgens.
While previous studies have associated PCOS with anxiety and depression, this research focused specifically on attention, which is a key component of how individuals receive, understand, and process information.
The research team, comprising Maitreyi Redkar and Professor Azizuddin Khan from the Psychophysiology Laboratory, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Bombay, evaluated two groups of participants.
One group included 101 women with PCOS, while the other consisted of 72 healthy women. All participants underwent hormonal assessment before performing a series of attention-related tasks.
The results showed that women with PCOS were slower to respond and more easily distracted than their healthy counterparts. They were over 50 percent slower in focused attention tasks and made about 10 percent more errors. They performed around 20 percent slower in divided attention tasks, with 3 percent more errors.
“The cognitive experiments are specifically designed to capture the subtle millisecond-level differences in how individuals respond to critical stimuli. These minute delays reveal significant impairments in attention, which may impact our real-life functioning,” said Professor Khan, who led the study.
He added, “In the specific context of focused attention, it is not just about concentrating on the task at hand to respond at the right time, but also inhibiting irrelevant distractors.”
The researchers explained that hormonal imbalances associated with PCOS could lead to decreased alertness and longer reaction times.
In addition to elevated androgen levels, the participants with PCOS also had insulin resistance, a condition linked to attention deficits. \
Insulin resistance disrupts glucose metabolism, which can negatively affect neuron activity in the brain and result in poor performance in tasks requiring focused attention.
Mental fatigue, including anxiety and frustration associated with PCOS, further contributes to the difficulty of managing divided attention tasks. The researchers pointed out that reduced accuracy in such tasks could interfere with working memory, which is essential for holding and using information temporarily.
“This makes daily activities such as keeping track of directions while driving or remembering a phone number to dial more challenging,” the researchers said.
The findings suggest a need for greater awareness and cognitive support for women with PCOS, especially in areas that affect their daily lives and overall mental well-being.
(with IANS inputs)
