BACKGROUND:

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a pathology present in 6 to 14% of women. However, in clinical practice it is underdiagnosed, which implies a presence of complications of the pathology that includes obesity, insulin resistance, metabolic alterations and infertility. The pathophysiology is not well defined, and the association of a chronic metabolic and inflammatory process is currently being considered, where inflammatory cytokines can present alterations both in their effect and in their signaling.

OBJETIVE:

To present the results of an updated systematic review of the involvement of TNF-alpha in polycystic ovary syndrome.

METHODOLOGY:

Narrative revision of articles indexed in Pub Med-NCBI, Web of Science, Google Scholar and Scopus, published in English or Spanish between 2014 and 2018 that included the concepts and association of polycystic ovary syndrome and tumor necrosis factor alpha in the title and abstract.

RESULTS:

43 articles were identified; after eliminating the duplicates, 29 remained and, in the end, the synthesis was carried out with 11 articles. The publications came from different countries: 54% of the studies were carried out in Chile, the United States and Iran, proportionally; the rest of the studies were carried out in Russia, China, Korea, Egypt and Pakistan.

CONCLUSIONS:

TNF-alpha is a cytokine associated with different systems that is involved in polycystic ovary syndrome.