Depression and anxiety in adolescents and young women with polycystic ovary syndrome: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract Objectives To evaluate the depression and anxiety symptoms, or both in adolescents and young women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) to those without PCOS. Contents A comprehensive electronic search was conducted to identify observational studies on PCOS patients (January 1991–December 2020). The population study included adolescents and young women (14–29 years of age) in two groups of cases (with PCOS) and controls (without PCOS) who were diagnosed with PCOS using the Rotterdam or National Institutes of Health criteria (NIH). Symptoms of depression, anxiety, or both, reported separately, were of interest. Mean (SD) of depression or anxiety symptoms, or both, as measured by a quantitatively validated scale for both the case and control groups. All eligible studies were quality assessed using the Newcastle–Ottawa Scale (NOS) tool. The initial database search resulted in the discovery of 1,582 papers, of which 806 were selected after screening the titles and abstracts and removing duplicates. A total of 49 papers were found to be suitable for full-text reading. This meta-analysis included ten studies comprising 941 adolescent/young women (391 with PCOS and 550 without PCOS). The standard mean difference (SMD) and its corresponding confidence interval (CI) at 95 % were used to compare depression or anxiety symptoms, or both, between two groups. Summary and outlook The results, which included 192 cases, demonstrated that adolescents/young women with PCOS had significantly more depressive symptoms than those without PCOS (n=360) (SMD 0.72; 95 % CI, 0.09–1.34; Z=2.25, p=0.025; Heterogeneity: I 2 =89.7 %; p=0.000). Also, the results which included 299 cases demonstrated that adolescents/young women with PCOS had significantly more anxiety symptoms than those without PCOS (n=421) (SMD 0.59; 95 % CI, 0.13–1.05; Z=2.51, p=0.012; Heterogeneity: I 2 =86.1 %; p=0.000). This meta-analysis demonstrates that adolescent/young women with PCOS have significantly more depression or anxiety symptoms than those without PCOS.