One of Maram Said’s dreams is to work in women’s health. The May graduate landed her first-choice rotation at St. Vincent Women’s Hospital in Indianapolis. She also explored women’s health through research during a rotation at Mid-Iowa Fertility, P.C.
Said and Brian Cooper, M.D., wanted to explore the association, suggested by previous studies, between endometriosis and polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), the two leading causes of female infertility among Mid-Iowa’s patients. Their thorough review of the electronic records of 330 patients revealed that only 31, or 9.4 percent, had both conditions, significantly lower than the 21 percent rate they’d expected. They also observed that patients with both conditions had more regular menstruation cycles.
“Taken together with our findings, it suggests that cyclic menstruation may be an important mechanism in the development of endometriosis,” they said in their abstract.
They presented a poster on their research at the 59th annual meeting of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in May in Washington, DC. Said says getting to attend the event “was one of the best experiences I’ve had.”
“I got to mingle with people from all over the world. Just on the elevator, I met people from Greece and the UK,” she says. “I’ve never been so pumped about obstetrics and gynecology.”
