PCOS Phenotype Quiz

What the PCOS Phenotype Quiz does

This page hosts a short symptom checklist that suggests which of four commonly described PCOS "phenotypes" your pattern of symptoms leans toward: insulin-resistant, inflammatory, adrenal, or post-pill. It draws its symptom lists from the phenotyping frameworks associated with Lara Briden and Andrea Dunaif, and it is meant as a conversation-starter, not a test result.

The quiz shows 20 symptoms grouped into four sets of five. You tick every symptom you actually experience across all four groups, then press "See my phenotype." It does not ask for labs, weight, cycle length, or a diagnosis, and it does not save anything. Everything happens in your browser as you click.

PCOS itself is diagnosed clinically by a provider using the Rotterdam criteria, usually alongside blood work and sometimes a pelvic ultrasound. This tool sits well before that step: it helps you name the pattern you see in yourself so you can ask sharper questions and know which labs are worth requesting.

How to read your result

The result is simple arithmetic. The tool counts how many symptoms you checked inside each of the four groups and names the group with the highest count as your "likely phenotype." If two groups tie, it favors whichever is listed first (insulin-resistant, then inflammatory, then adrenal, then post-pill). It also tells you the raw score, such as "you matched 3 of 5 key symptoms in this group," so you can see how strong the signal actually was.

If you scored in more than one group, the result adds a "you may have mixed features" section listing the other groups and their counts. That is deliberate: PCOS is heterogeneous, and many people carry overlapping drivers rather than one clean type. Treat a two-way or three-way split as a sign to explore more than one avenue with your clinician, not as a contradiction.

Each phenotype comes with a short "treatment notes" list — for example, insulin-sensitizing approaches for the insulin-resistant type, or giving 6 to 12 months of cycle tracking before assuming post-pill PCOS. These are general patterns the tool associates with each type, not a prescription. Bring the named phenotype and its lab hints (testosterone, DHEA-S, fasting insulin, AMH) to a provider, and let them decide what applies to you.

If you tick nothing and submit, the tool doesn't guess. It tells you to talk to a clinician about labs. That is the honest answer when there is no symptom pattern to weigh.

What the result is based on

The result is produced by counting checkboxes, nothing more. There is no model, no dataset, and no statistical scoring behind it — the tool tallies your selections within each of four fixed groups and reports the group with the most checks. The symptom lists are hardcoded and come from the Briden/Dunaif phenotyping frameworks named in the tool.

A few figures shown alongside the results are quoted from the tool's own summary text: it describes insulin-resistant PCOS as the most common phenotype (estimated 70%+ of cases), notes that roughly 20-30% of PCOS cases involve adrenal androgen excess, and mentions small studies on spearmint tea (2 cups a day) for androgen reduction. These are the tool's framing, not independent claims verified on this page.

Because scoring is a raw count, the phenotype with more listed symptoms that happen to match you can win even if a different driver is more clinically important. The number the tool shows ("X of 5") is the honest measure of how much of any single pattern you actually matched.

What it cannot tell you

• It cannot confirm you have PCOS at all. Every symptom here overlaps with thyroid disorders, hypothalamic amenorrhea, high prolactin, and non-classical congenital adrenal hyperplasia — conditions only labs and a provider can separate from PCOS.
• It never sees your blood work. The adrenal group asks about high DHEA-S but explicitly accepts "or never been tested," so a high score can come purely from unmeasured guesses rather than confirmed lab values.
• Ties are broken by list order, not by clinical weight — if you match three insulin-resistant and three adrenal symptoms, the tool reports insulin-resistant simply because it is listed first, even though the two are equally supported.
• All 20 symptoms count equally. A hallmark finding like acanthosis nigricans carries no more weight than a milder one like sugar cravings, so the count can overstate a group padded with common, non-specific symptoms.
• It cannot handle overlap or causation between groups. Post-pill recovery, insulin resistance, and stress can all coexist, and the tool splits your checks across groups without recognizing that one may be driving the others.
• The treatment notes are generic to each phenotype and take no account of your age, whether you want to conceive, other conditions, or medications — none of which the quiz asks about.