A long-overdue name change recognizes PMOS as a complex metabolic and endocrine disorder—but meaningful progress will require far greater investment in women’s health research.
Despite decades of federal mandates to include women in research, less than 9 percent of NIH funding over the past decade has focused explicitly on women’s health.
And for women’s health, the research has been underfunded and undervalued for so long that a vocabulary fix (however warranted) cannot close the gap on its own.
… Less than 9 percent of NIH funding over the past decade has focused explicitly on women’s health.
So do the countless women’s health conditions that have not yet had their landmark moment in The Lancet.
A long-overdue name change recognizes PMOS as a complex metabolic and endocrine disorder—but meaningful progress will require far greater investment in women’s health research.
National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya speaks before President Donald Trump signs an executive order in the Oval Office on April 18, 2026. Despite decades of federal mandates to include women in research, less than 9 percent of NIH funding over the past decade has focused explicitly on women’s health. (Jim Watson / AFP via Getty Images)
The announcement last month polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) will be renamed polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS) was a genuine milestone. After 14 years of global collaboration, 22,000 survey responses and workshops spanning every inhabited continent, researchers and patients finally agreed on a name that reflects what the condition actually is: not a quirk of the ovaries, but a complex, multi-system disorder of hormones, metabolism and endocrine function affecting one in eight women worldwide.
For decades, the term polycystic had patients and clinicians alike focusing on ovarian cysts, while metabolic dysfunction and insulin resistance went underappreciated and undertreated. Patients report feeling dismissed, confused and dissatisfied with their care.
The very name, researchers concluded, contributed to stigma, delayed diagnosis and fragmented policy.
But renaming a disease is not the same as researching it. And for women’s health, the research has been underfunded and undervalued for so long that a vocabulary fix (however warranted) cannot close the gap on its own.
Despite policy mandates requiring the inclusion of women in federally funded research since the early 1990s, the National Academies of Sciences recently found that less than 9 percent of NIH funding over the past decade has focused explicitly on women’s health.
For a population that constitutes half of humanity, that figure is scientifically indefensible.
A gynecological ultrasound image associated with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), recently renamed polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS) to better reflect the condition’s hormonal and metabolic complexity beyond the ovaries. (BSIP / UIG via Getty Images)
The consequences are measurable: Women live longer than men but spend more of those years in poorer health, they experience higher rates of misdiagnosis, and they respond differently to treatments that were tested primarily on male subjects. The “one-body” assumption—the idea that women are simply smaller men, and that findings from male subjects can be mapped directly onto female biology—has quietly pervaded clinical research for generations, producing an evidence base with a systematic blind spot built in.
PCOS—now PMOS—is a case study in what that blind spot costs. The condition, which affects 170 million women worldwide, has historically been classified as a gynecological problem and funded accordingly. Its metabolic features, cardiovascular risks and psychological burden were all sidelined in research agendas partly because of the name, but also because women’s health conditions have consistently attracted less funding, less scientific attention and less institutional urgency than conditions perceived as affecting everyone.
… Less than 9 percent of NIH funding over the past decade has focused explicitly on women’s health. For a population that constitutes half of humanity, that figure is scientifically indefensible.
RAND Corporation microsimulations have estimated that increasing research investment in women’s health could yield a return of more than 9,500 percent on investment in the case of coronary artery disease alone, which represents one of the leading killers of women, and one of the conditions most consistently studied in men.
The PMOS renaming process itself illustrates how much catching up remains to be done.
The condition was identified in 1935.
It took until 2012 for the NIH to formally acknowledge that its name was inaccurate and call for a change.
The actual name change did not arrive until 14 years later, drawing on iterative rounds of global consensus, Delphi surveys, group workshops, and marketing analysis.
Nearly a century has gone by between the first clinical description and a name that accurately describes what the condition is.
That is not a story of science moving carefully. It is a story of a condition affecting women moving slowly because conditions affecting women have not been the priority.
Thomas Kuhn argued that scientific revolutions happen not through the gradual accumulation of evidence but through the recognition of anomalies: findings that cannot be explained within existing frameworks and that eventually force the framework to break. The history of sex-differences research is filled with such anomalies, including drugs that worked differently in women, diseases that presented differently, and risk factors that were systematically missed because the research models didn’t account for them.
The PMOS rename is a small Kuhnian moment. It acknowledges that the old framework (PCOS as an ovarian condition) could not explain the data. The new name makes room for a more accurate model. But naming an anomaly is not the same as resolving it.
… PMOS is not just poorly named but poorly funded, poorly understood, and part of a broader pattern of neglect that costs women their health and the scientific community its accuracy
The research makes clear that there is a need and an opportunity to restructure women’s health research. This includes: more funding directed explicitly at conditions affecting women and at sex-based differences in disease mechanisms and treatment response; more clinical trials designed with adequate female representation and the statistical power to detect sex-specific effects; more research infrastructure built around the recognition that male and female bodies are not interchangeable.
PMOS now has an implementation roadmap: a three-year transition period, integration into electronic health records, alignment with disease classification systems, and incorporation into international clinical guidelines by 2028. That is exactly the kind of coordinated, funded, multi-institutional commitment that advances medicine. The question is whether the same discipline will be applied to funding the underlying research—not just updating the label, but building the evidence base that the new name implicitly promises.
The researchers and advocates who drove this renaming have already demonstrated what is possible when science, patients, and institutions align around a clear mandate. They secured international funding, built governance across 56 organizations, and produced a consensus process that the Lancet has described as unprecedented in scope.
That same coalition, and the visibility the name change generates, can now be turned toward an even bigger effort: making the case that PMOS is not just poorly named but poorly funded, poorly understood, and part of a broader pattern of neglect that costs women their health and the scientific community its accuracy.
A better name is a beginning. The condition formerly known as PCOS deserves research commensurate with its prevalence, its complexity and its cost.
So do the countless women’s health conditions that have not yet had their landmark moment in The Lancet.
