Main Menu
Resources
Projects
© Intersex Initiative
Unless otherwise indicated, you may copy, reprint, distribute, and even modify contents of this web site under the Creative Commons license.
A new study published in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology confirms what many advocates have suspected: women who have complete or mosaic XY karyotype are often misdiagnosed. Intersex medicine experts from the Middlesex Clinic, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital of the University College London Hospitals collected data for forty-six adult XY women to assign best possible diagnoses, then compared them to the diagnoses these women had previously received elsewhere.
According to the study, less than half of the diagnosis given to the participants could be confirmed by the experts, while a large portion of the rest being inaccurate (6.5% of the women could not be diagnosed one way or another).
Researchers warn: "Assigning the wrong diagnosis may be harmful, for example, if it leads to irreversible virilising changes or development of a gonadal malignancy, and for all cases excludes accurate condition management and genetic counselling for both the patient and their immediate family."
Source:
Minto CL, Crouch NS, Conway GS & Creighton SM. (2005) "XY females: revisiting the diagnosis." BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology 112 (10), 1407-1410.
Posted by Emi on Sep 21, 2005