A Recent Trend in Diagnosis and Therapeutics for Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) Management: A Patent Landscape...

To investigate technological advancements for the diagnosis and therapeutic management of PCOS. Another objective is to identify the top relevant field of invention, applicants, and inventors in the field.

Several combinations of keywords PCOS, polycystic ovary, PCOD, PCO, multicystic ovary, ovarian degeneration, hyperandrogenism, anovulation, and oligomenorrhoea were used to conduct a patent literature search in a freely accessible patent database, namely "Patentscope". A wild-card search query was performed to get only relevant patents in the "title", "abstract", and "description".

A patent literature search identified 915 relevant patent applications, including 123 inventions having diagnostic potential and 777 inventions having therapeutic potential, out of which 223 patent applications are based on traditional knowledge, describing mostly the use of locally available herbs, along with 15 patent applications that describe the combined category. The largest number of patent applications belongs to A61, where 'A' stands for the Human necessities section and '61' stands for the class Medical or veterinary science and Hygiene. The study also identifies the top 10 applicants and the top 10 inventors.

Our analysis indicates a general trend of an increase in relevant patent filings with more emphasis on therapeutics. A61K is the largest IPC category under which patents are being filed.