Yu Zhen

By Junyong Han, Zhen Yu, Gang Chen and Fan Wang

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a common endocrine disease in women of childbearing age. Many heterogeneous clinical manifestations of PCOS, including hyperandrogenism, obesity, insulin resistance, hirsutism, acne, chronic anovulation and infertility, seriously affected the quality of life of women worldwide and made it difficult to clearly demonstrate the specific pathophysiology. In recent years, large-scale studies have shown that non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) play an important role in the regulation of ovarian functions, which did not have the ability to encode proteins and could regulate hormone synthesis and germ cell development, differentiation, and apoptosis by silencing transposable elements and regulating coding genes. A number of researches by whole transcriptome sequencing of polycystic ovaries (PCO) from PCOS patients or PCOS model animals found that the abnormal expressions of many ncRNAs were involved in the regulation of ovarian dysfunctions of PCOS, including the development of oocytes, the microenvironment of follicular fluid, and the proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis of granulosa cells. The present review focused on the roles of ncRNAs in the PCO of PCOS, in order to provide a theoretical basis for further understanding of the molecular mechanisms of PCO formation in PCOS.

Part of the book: Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome