India, May 23 -- It's a condition that affects one in eight women around the world. Diagnosed through a matrix of clinical symptoms, ultrasound tests and guesswork, it has no known cure, has been historically underfunded and was, until last week, even wrongly named for close to a century.

When he started his endocrinology practice 42 years ago, Dr Ambrish Mittal, endocrinology head, Max Healthcare, knew PCOS, or polycystic ovary syndrome, was a misnomer. "Ovarian cysts were a small part of the story," he says. "Some women had no cysts at all, others had excess hair growth, and not everybody was obese," he says of the condition's varied symptoms. How is it that a name slapped on in 1935 stuck even though doctors knew it inadequately descr...