There are men who do not feel men enough. Others love men. And some others feel like a woman. And what about women feeling like a man trapped in a woman's body? Being transsexual is a stressful condition, and sex change operations can bring the desired results or not.

A new study published in the "Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism" shows that, oppositely to a common concept, the condition of being female-to-male transsexual is not connected to the polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a common condition, even if their testosterone levels are much higher than in "normal" women.

PCOS is a female sex hormone imbalance accompanied by small painful cysts on the ovaries and many other symptoms, all causing decreased fertility. It is characterized by an overproduction of male hormones in women, that's why many put a link between PCOS and higher likelihood to female-to-male transsexuality.

"Several studies have reported a higher prevalence of PCOS in female-to-male transsexuals but the numbers of patients were small and ultrasound was not used for diagnosis. This is the first prospective endocrine evaluation of female-to-male transsexuals using up-to-date state-of-the-art criteria incorporating transvaginal ultrasonography for diagnosing PCOS or hyperandrogenemia," said Dr. Andreas Mueller of Erlangen University Hospital, in Erlangen, Germany.

Clinical, biochemical, and ultrasound tests were used for detecting PCOS in a pool of 61 female-to-male transsexuals. This data was compared with that coming from testing 94 healthy random control subjects.

To exclude patients having high amounts of androgens because of self-medication, only those who had not used any hormone drug entered into the research pool.

By now, over 50 genes have been discovered to be involved in sex expression, and seven operate in the brain even before the gonads are formed. Their expression patterns could be involved in cases of transsexual people.