If you were diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome, the condition you have now has a different name.
On 12 May 2026, The Lancet published the outcome of a global consensus process renaming it Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome, or PMOS (Teede et al., 2026).
It is less a rebrand and more a correction. Part of the old name was inaccurate, and the rest of it was too narrow.
The problem with the old name
The cysts in "polycystic" are not cysts.
What shows on an ultrasound in many women with the condition is a number of small follicles, which are ordinary structures the ovary produces. Professor Helena Teede, the paper's first author, put it plainly in the announcement: "What we now know is that there is actually no increase in abnormal cysts on the ovary."
A woman can be diagnosed with the condition and have entirely typical-looking ovaries. Ovarian appearance is one possible criterion among several, and a diagnosis can be made without it.
So the name pointed at a feature that is often absent, sometimes irrelevant, and misnamed even when present.
What that name cost
The Endocrine Society, one of the 56 organisations behind the change, described the old name as reducing "a complex, long-term hormonal or endocrine disorder to a misunderstanding about 'cysts' and a focus on ovaries," and stated that this "contributed to missed diagnoses and inadequate treatment."
The consensus paper gives three reasons for rejecting the old name. It centres ovarian cysts, which are not required for diagnosis. It fails to reflect the condition's systemic metabolic nature. And it misleads patients and delays diagnosis.
The third reason matters most. A name tells a doctor where to look. This one pointed at the ovaries while the condition was working across the hormonal and metabolic systems, and women waited years for an answer as a result.
Up to 70%
of women with the condition worldwide remain undiagnosed.
Reported in Teede et al., 2026.
What the new name says instead
Read the three words separately.
Polyendocrine. More than one hormone system is involved. Not one gland, not one hormone, and not only the reproductive ones.
Metabolic. How the body handles energy, insulin and fat storage sits inside the condition itself. The consensus paper cites gold-standard clamp studies finding insulin resistance in around 85% of women with the condition, including around 75% of those in the lean BMI range. That last figure matters. Insulin resistance shows up in thin women too.
Ovarian. The ovaries are still involved. They are one part of a larger picture.
The new name describes a hormonal and metabolic condition that involves the ovaries. The old one described an ovarian condition. That difference is the entire point.
How the decision was made
This matters as much as the name itself, because the obvious question about any renaming is who decided.
The process ran for fourteen years. It drew more than 22,000 survey responses from patients and from health professionals across multiple disciplines, gathered through a series of international workshops. Fifty-six patient and professional organisations took part, including the Endocrine Society, the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, and the Androgen Excess and PCOS Society. The result was published in The Lancet, which is about as high as the bar goes in medical publishing.
What happens now
There is a three-year transition period. Full implementation lands with the 2028 update to the International Evidence-Based Guideline.
Practically, that means both names will be in use for a while. Your medical records, your doctor, your test requisitions and most of the internet will say PCOS for some time yet. Both names are correct during the transition.
Why this lands differently in India
PMOS is more prevalent among Indian women than the global average.
How many women have PMOS:
1 in 5 women in India
1 in 8 women worldwide
The largest and most rigorous Indian study to date, run by the ICMR PCOS National Task Force across eight states with 9,824 women aged 18 to 40, found a prevalence of 19.6% under Rotterdam criteria, which is close to one in five (Ganie et al., 2024, JAMA Network Open). Globally the figure is around one in eight, or more than 170 million people. The most recent global analysis puts the WHO South-East Asia region, which includes India, at 14.3%, the second highest of any region in the world (Neven et al., 2026, Human Reproduction Update).
There is a second reason the rename matters here specifically.
Indian clinical practice already recognises that metabolic thresholds differ for Indian bodies. Obesity is defined at a BMI of 25 rather than 30, because the metabolic risk arrives at a lower weight. Applied to the same group of apparently healthy Indian women aged 18 to 40, the WHO threshold puts 8.1% in the obese range and the Indian threshold puts around 40% (Ganie et al., 2023, JMIR Public Health and Surveillance). Same women, two standards, two very different answers.
Apparently healthy Indian women aged 18 to 40, counted as obese:
40%
using India's threshold, where obesity starts at a BMI of 25
8.1%
using the WHO threshold, where obesity starts at a BMI of 30
The new name puts metabolism in the title. That matches what the Indian data shows.
We use PMOS across this site, with "PMOS (formerly PCOS)" on first mention for as long as the transition runs, since PCOS is still the term most people search for.
Sources
- Teede HJ, Tassone EC, Brennan L, et al. "Polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome, the new name for polycystic ovary syndrome: a multistep global consensus process." The Lancet. 2026;407:2329–2339. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(26)00717-8
- Endocrine Society. "Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome: New name to improve diagnosis and care of condition affecting 170 million women worldwide." 12 May 2026. Source for the process detail and the quotation from Professor Teede.
- Ganie MA, Chowdhury S, Malhotra N, et al. "Prevalence, Phenotypes, and Comorbidities of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome Among Indian Women." JAMA Network Open. 2024;7(10):e2440583. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.40583
- Neven ACH, Forslund M, Ranasinha S, et al. "Prevalence of polycystic ovary syndrome: a global and regional systematic review and meta-analysis." Human Reproduction Update. 2026;32(3):277–312. doi:10.1093/humupd/dmaf030
- Ganie MA, Chowdhury S, Suri V, et al. "Prevalence, Regional Variations, and Predictors of Overweight, Obesity, and Hypertension Among Healthy Reproductive-Age Indian Women." JMIR Public Health and Surveillance. 2023;9:e43199. doi:10.2196/43199
The insulin resistance figures and the 70% undiagnosed figure are reported in Teede et al. 2026, which draws them from primary studies cited within that paper.
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