In a landmark global effort led by Monash University, one of the world’s most common women’s health conditions has been renamed to better reflect its complex, multisystem nature. The condition, previously known as Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), will now be called Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome (PMOS), a change experts say corrects decades of misunderstanding that reduced the disorder to just “ovarian cysts.”

The renaming, published in The Lancet, follows 14 years of global collaboration involving clinicians, researchers, patient groups and women living with the condition.…