Challenges in Diagnosis of Reproductive Dysfunction

Tarala D. Nandedkar
In: Current Women's Health Reviews · 2006 · vol. 2(2) , pp. 145–153 · doi:10.2174/157340406776931043 · W2035559069
article OA: closed CC0
Full text JSON View on OpenAlex View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by gemini-2.5-flash-lite, 2026-08-05 ⓘ

This review highlights progress in cellular and molecular diagnostics for reproductive disorders, emphasizing the need for specific markers and new molecular techniques to overcome challenges in early detection and prognosis.

One-sentence paraphrase of the abstract; not a substitute for reading it. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

Ovarian function and hence cyclicity in women is initiated at puberty and regular menstrual cycles continue until menopause, the point of reproductive senescence. Disturbances in normal cyclicity are usually indicative of a reproductive disorder in women. Disturbance/s may be manifested as oligomenorrhoea, dysmenorrhoea, amenorrhoea or anovulation etc and aid/s in early detection of the clinical condition. On the other hand, in certain ovarian disorders, such as ovarian cancer, symptoms of dysfunction are observed only in the advanced stage of the disease. It is therefore imperative to develop tests/techniques for detecting the disorder at an initial stage in order to facilitate timely treatment. In case of some ovarian conditions such as Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) and Premature Ovarian Failure (POF), the diagnostic criteria and methods of detection are well - defined. However, in a majority of disorders the cause of the disease is not clear, thus posing limitations in the development of new methods of detection or improvement of the existing ones. For instance, an increase in CA125 is widely used for the prognosis of ovarian cancer but the same is not a specific marker since CA125 is known to increase in other cancers as well as endometriosis. Identification of highly specific markers for the multitude of ovarian pathologies is therefore essential. In recent years, development of molecular diagnostic techniques such as Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), Single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), has gained momentum over currently available methods of detection such as ultrasonography, radioimmunoassay to elucidate the extent of damage to the reproductive organ. In the review, recent progress in detection of diseases at the cellular and molecular level, and possible research avenues in diagnosis and prognosis of reproductive disorders has been highlighted. Keywords: Reproductive tract infections, ovarian disorders, menstrual dysfunction, molecular biology techniques, genetics, engineering animals
Full text 2,043 characters · extracted from oa-doi-fallback · 2 sections · click to expand

Abstract

Ovarian function and hence cyclicity in women is initiated at puberty and regular menstrual cycles continue until menopause, the point of reproductive senescence. Disturbances in normal cyclicity are usually indicative of a reproductive disorder in women. Disturbance/s may be manifested as oligomenorrhoea, dysmenorrhoea, amenorrhoea or anovulation etc and aid/s in early detection of the clinical condition. On the other hand, in certain ovarian disorders, such as ovarian cancer, symptoms of dysfunction are observed only in the advanced stage of the disease. It is therefore imperative to develop tests/techniques for detecting the disorder at an initial stage in order to facilitate timely treatment. In case of some ovarian conditions such as Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) and Premature Ovarian Failure (POF), the diagnostic criteria and methods of detection are well - defined. However, in a majority of disorders the cause of the disease is not clear, thus posing limitations in the development of new methods of detection or improvement of the existing ones. For instance, an increase in CA125 is widely used for the prognosis of ovarian cancer but the same is not a specific marker since CA125 is known to increase in other cancers as well as endometriosis. Identification of highly specific markers for the multitude of ovarian pathologies is therefore essential. In recent years, development of molecular diagnostic techniques such as Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), Single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), has gained momentum over currently available methods of detection such as ultrasonography, radioimmunoassay to elucidate the extent of damage to the reproductive organ. In the review, recent progress in detection of diseases at the cellular and molecular level, and possible research avenues in diagnosis and prognosis of reproductive disorders has been highlighted.

Keywords

Reproductive tract infections, ovarian disorders, menstrual dysfunction, molecular biology techniques, genetics, engineering animals 4

Text is read by the "Ask this paper" AI Q&A widget below. Extraction quality varies by source — PMC NXML preserves structure cleanly, OA-HTML may include some navigation residue, and OA-PDF can have broken hyphenation. The publisher copy (via DOI) is the canonical version.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

⚙ Ask this paper AI returns verbatim quotes from the full text · source: oa-doi-fallback ⓘ

Answers must be backed by verbatim quotes from this paper's full text. Hallucinated quotes are dropped automatically; if no verbatim passage answers the question, we say so. How this works

Condition tags

endometriosisdysmenorrhea

Citation neighborhood (no data yet)

We don't have any in-corpus citations linked to this paper yet. The paper's references may be in our DB but unresolved to ``paper_id`` (resolution happens at ingest when the cited DOI matches a row we already have). Run the cross-source citation reconcile pass to retry.

Source provenance

openalex
last seen: 2026-06-04T00:00:01.174412+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK