MEETING SUMMARY - DECEMBER 16, 2000

We had an exciting time at our third support meeting which was held at our new meeting location in downtown Austin. We are very grateful for the generous space donated to us by St. David's Occupational Health Services.

Many thanks to Shawn who was able to borrow an informative CD from her doctor titled "PCOS: The Insulin Resistance Connection". This CD is a multimedia presentation of a PCOS symposium for physicians which took place in September 1999 in Toronto, Ontario Canada. Due to time constraints, we only watched the presentations by Dr. John E. Nestler of Richmond, Virginia who has published three papers in the New England Journal of Medicine on the effects of excess insulin in PCOS patients and the beneficial actions of insulin sensitizers as treatment for PCOS.

During the hour and a half presentation segment, we learned that part of the trouble with finding an effective treatment for PCOS is that there is not yet a clear indicator for doctors to use for diagnosis. The indicator was formerly cysts on the ovaries, but we now know that method is archaic if used as the sole diagnostic criteria. Dr. Nestler said he gives his PCOS patients an insulin sensitizer such as Metformin regardless of whether or not the patient is insulin resistant as he does not believe insulin resistance to be the diagnostic criteria either.

We also had a guest appearance by Becky Blahuta, RN, the Clinical Research Coordinator for the new PCOS research study being conducted right here in Austin. The study is being conducted by Dr. Michele McDermott and INSMED Pharmaceuticals, and they will be investigating the use of d-chiro-inositol (also known as INS-1) as a treatment for PCOS. The is a VERY promising treatment without the side effects of Metformin. If you would like more information about participating in this study, please visit our Research page.

In conclusion, we discussed the board of director positions that need to be filled with nominations. Names of current nominees were distributed. Contact us for more details.