Xiaomiao Zhao
Sun Yat-sen University, China
Title: Assessing new terminal body and facial hair growth in pregnancy: Towards developing a simplified visually scoring system for hirsutism
Biography
Biography: Xiaomiao Zhao
Abstract
This study is to investigate the distribution and progression of terminal hair growth in pregnant women and determine whether a simplified scoring system for assessing hirsutism was possible. We recruited 115 pregnant women (discovery cohort) from before pregnancy to 24th gestation weeks and 1159 PCOS women (validation cohort) in out-patient department in an academic hospital and collected their clinical data including the assessment of facial and body terminal hair growth by modified Ferriman and Gallwey score system (mFG score) and the measurement of total testosterone (TT) level by liquid chromatographic tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS), through a prospective follow-up observational study. It showed that the TT level and mFG score increased as pregnancy progressing. Both the prospective study and receiver operating characteristics curve (ROC) indicated that the most contributive areas to hirsutism (defined as an mFG score ³ 5) with new terminal hair growth were upper lip, lower back, lower abdomen and thigh. From which, a simplified mFG scoring system (sFG) was developed and a cut-off value of ³3 was determined as ‘hirsutism’. The pregnant ‘hirsute’ women could be distinguished from ‘non-hirsute’ with an accuracy of 95.2%, sensitivity of 96.8% and specificity of 94.3% for detecting hirsutism. This was further validated in PCOS population with a sensitivity, specificity and PPV of 97.6%, 96.4% and 96.4%, respectively. This study suggests that upper lip, lower back, lower abdomen and thigh may be an effective simplified combination of the mFG system for the evaluation of excess hair growth in Chinese women.