GLP-1 & PCOS Breakthroughs: How Ozempic is Changing Women’s Health | Dr. Melanie Cree

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (0:00)
PCOS affects millions of women, yet most still struggle to get real answers. If you're dealing with irregular periods, weight gain, fertility issues, or hormonal imbalances, this episode, friends, is for you. Today, we're sitting down with Dr. Melanie Cree, a leading pediatric endocrinologist and one of the top researchers in PCOS treatment.

**Dr. Melanie Cree** (0:25)
The other side of PCO really seems to be related to type 2 diabetes. The primary therapy for PCOS is lifestyle changes.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (0:36)
Today, she'll be breaking down the latest breakthroughs in managing PCOS. If you've ever been told that PCOS is just about losing weight or taking birth control, this conversation will change the way you think about it. Dr. Melanie Cree, welcome to the show.

**Dr. Melanie Cree** (1:01)
Thank you.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (1:01)
And I have to tell you, you're an MD, PhD. You are a physician scientist, and I just have to read this, because we look for the best of the best, and you have an extraordinary track record for somebody so young, so just incredible. You are a pediatric endocrinologist, associate professor at the University of Colorado, and Children's Hospital. You have a clinical practice, still focused on treating adolescents, polycystic ovarian syndrome. You founded and direct the Children's Hospital Colorado. It's a multidisciplinary PCOS clinic. You are really a world-leading expert, and we are just so happy to have you.

**Dr. Melanie Cree** (1:49)
Thank you. Thank you. I'm happy to talk about my work.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (1:52)
We cannot wait, and before you do, I want to know, why do you do what you do?

**Dr. Melanie Cree** (2:00)
I think in part, I'm a third-generation physician, and really watched my father a lot as a child, and he's a family physician, and he would take me on house calls, and I just really saw how when you take the time in the extra step, you can really make a difference in people's lives. Then I'm very passionate about women's health. I went to Bryn Mawr College, it's an all-women's college, and through my career, have worked towards providing better care for women, in part for what I've seen in my friends, in part for the errors or misdiagnoses and things that have happened in my own life. So really working towards improving women's health, and so it's one of the Texas phrases, get-her-done. So I love that.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (2:57)
Yeah. Pretty extraordinary. Your research focuses on how insulin works in youth with polycystic ovarian syndrome or diabetes. I would love to talk about the spectrum of the work that you're doing and really where you're focused right now.

**Dr. Melanie Cree** (3:12)
Yeah. So for PCOS, I'm pretty much the entire human spectrum. So I'm good friends with the head and founder of PCOS Challenge, which is the biggest patient organization within the United States. And so do a lot of patient advocacy and education. So we went to Capitol Hill in DC one year with one of my patients and met with all our representatives, working on patient education materials, patient facing, trying to get funding there, running clinical trials, so testing existing medicines to see if they help with PCOS, and then getting more into metabolism. So using special chemicals called stable isotope tracers to understand how the liver works and how muscle works and how fat tissue works, and developing methods to measure how different things work in the liver. So we found a new pathway in mammals that had never been described before.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (4:21)
No big deal?

**Dr. Melanie Cree** (4:21)
No biggie.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (4:23)
And what is that pathway? That's crazy.

**Dr. Melanie Cree** (4:25)
So we found that, so within the liver, when we have extra fat, we burn it. And when we burn that, we make reactive oxygen species. And that leads to fibrosis and liver disease.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (4:39)
Essentially fatty liver.

**Dr. Melanie Cree** (4:40)
Yes, exactly. So you've got all the extra fat, and then you get the fibrosis. And there's a compound called glutathione that we make. And so glutathione kind of mops up those reactive oxygen species. So if you have enough glutathione, you don't get fibrosis in the liver. So we found that glycerol, which is the backbone in fat, actually can be turned into glutathione.
And that was the new pathway.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (5:08)
That's fascinating.

**Dr. Melanie Cree** (5:10)
So our hypothesis is that when you have extra weight or we're eating fatty foods, that you've got free fatty acids and then you've got the glycerol. And they're both in excess. So the free fatty acids go into fat, and then they get burned, and the glycerol comes to make the glutathione to balance out the reactive oxygen species when the fat from the free fatty acids is burned.