Fay­ola k J Fras­er

When a med­ical mis­di­ag­no­sis drove her to seek her own an­swers, Dr Stephanie Mo­hammed un­cov­ered the pas­sion and pur­pose of her life. Mo­hammed, along with a team, is lead­ing ground­break­ing re­search on Poly­cys­tic Ovary Syn­drome (PCOS) a con­di­tion that af­fects many women world­wide.

Mo­ti­vat­ed by the lack of base­line da­ta in T&T, and a love for sci­ence and re­search, she has pur­sued re­search in the area, lead­ing to the first-ever study on the ef­fects of elec­tro­mag­net­ic ra­di­a­tion on PCOS.

This work has not on­ly ad­vanced sci­en­tif­ic un­der­stand­ing of the con­di­tion but has helped re­duce the stig­ma as­so­ci­at­ed with fe­male re­pro­duc­tive health is­sues. Dr Mo­hammed grad­u­at­ed from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine with a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence in Physics and Chem­istry, and be­gan work­ing in her fam­i­ly’s con­struc­tion busi­ness.

Seek­ing to branch out in­to her own pur­suits, she de­signed and built a hy­dro­pon­ic sys­tem, in which she grew hy­dro­pon­ic let­tuce, chive, and cel­ery and sold them to su­per­mar­kets in­clud­ing the then-Hi­lo and Per­sad’s.

“I want­ed to help peo­ple get good, fresh, af­ford­able pro­duce, and re­duce price mar­gins,” she says, “I grew up in a home where we did a lot of char­i­ty work.” Mo­hammed knew that ul­ti­mate­ly her ca­reer path would be dri­ven by her de­sire to serve oth­ers. Cou­pled with her love for sci­ences, she was even­tu­al­ly drawn to the med­ical field, want­i­ng to ap­ply physics in med­i­cine.

When Dr Mo­hammed be­gan ex­pe­ri­enc­ing symp­toms of ir­reg­u­lar­i­ty in her men­stru­al cy­cle, she was mis­di­ag­nosed with PCOS and pre­scribed birth con­trol as the rem­e­dy. Quick­ly re­al­is­ing there was a gap in the med­ical field as it per­tained to da­ta sur­round­ing PCOS, she honed in on study­ing elec­tro­mag­net­ic ra­di­a­tion and mak­ing cru­cial link­ages on how it could re­late to the con­di­tion.

She did her MPhil at the UWI, which was up­grad­ed to a PhD be­cause of the nov­el­ty of her re­search. Mo­hammed in­duced rats with PCOS so that their ovaries would be­come cys­tic, and their hor­mon­al bal­ance would be dis­rupt­ed. Then, she kept the rats in a cage where they were ex­posed to a non-harm­ful fre­quen­cy of ra­di­a­tion.

Her pi­o­neer­ing re­search, which is still con­tin­u­ing, showed that the ra­di­a­tion suc­cess­ful­ly helped re­duce cys­tic fol­li­cles in rats, but the re­search still re­quires repli­ca­tion and test­ing be­fore it is con­clu­sive. Sci­ence has been Mo­hammed’s call­ing for as long as she can re­mem­ber.

“I thought I wasn’t smart enough to go in­to med­i­cine, but that was be­cause of my self-es­teem.”

She re­called when she was in Form 3 at Tabaquite Com­pos­ite, she des­per­ate­ly want­ed to do Physics but was put in the class for Food and Nu­tri­tion. “I cre­at­ed a ri­ot,” she laughs, and even­tu­al­ly the Physics teacher ad­vo­cat­ed for her to join the class. It is im­pos­si­ble to ig­nore her love for the sub­ject, as she says “Physics is all around us, it de­ter­mines how every­thing works, how our bod­ies work, and the laws of na­ture.” In­deed, this love for Physics has not on­ly in­formed her ca­reer choice but has al­lowed for her in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion from con­fer­ences in Italy, the Nether­lands, who have award­ed her re­search.

Along with a team of es­tab­lished sci­en­tists, in­clud­ing Prof Ri­car­do Azz­iz, the founder of the AE-PCOS So­ci­ety, she is col­lect­ing cru­cial da­ta for re­search to ad­vance the treat­ment of PCOS in T&T.

In a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort, sup­port­ed by the St Au­gus­tine Ro­tary Club, the team ran a preva­lence study to as­sess PCOS in T&T, across mul­ti­ple ge­o­graph­ic lo­ca­tions, with 250 par­tic­i­pants be­tween 18-45 years old.

Pre­lim­i­nary da­ta found a sev­en per cent preva­lence of PCOS in T&T, and a strong as­so­ci­a­tion with PCOS and acan­tho­sis (dark­en­ing of skin un­der arms and be­hind neck), along with a strong as­so­ci­a­tion with in­sulin re­sis­tance and type 2 di­a­betes.

This im­por­tant da­ta has huge im­pli­ca­tions for not on­ly the study of PCOS in T&T but al­so the un­der­stand­ing of lifestyle dis­eases such as Di­a­betes which has a high na­tion­al preva­lence. Of­fered a post-doc­tor­al po­si­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, Mo­hammed has now tak­en her love of sci­ence world­wide.

She is us­ing da­ta sets and cre­at­ing da­ta mod­els to pre­dict out­comes of PCOS, and al­so re­cent­ly start­ed re­search­ing menopause. Mo­hammed wants to use her ex­pe­ri­ence and in­for­ma­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia to ben­e­fit her home and hosts we­bi­na­rs with peo­ple from over 23 coun­tries about PCOS, and we­bi­na­rs for ado­les­cents to un­der­stand the signs of PCOS.

Ac­cord­ing to the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion, she says, “We need to start di­ag­nos­ing re­pro­duc­tive is­sues from ado­les­cence, and en­cour­age young peo­ple to get their re­pro­duc­tive health checked.”

Mo­hammed added that “the pur­pose of a sci­en­tist is to serve hu­man­i­ty,” and she hopes to reach many women, even and es­pe­cial­ly those who have been mis­di­ag­nosed as she was. “When I meet pa­tients, I feel sor­ry for them that there’s no in­for­ma­tion, and peo­ple can end up tak­ing wrong or un­nec­es­sary treat­ments and med­ica­tion.”

It is this de­sire to serve that dri­ves her, not a de­sire to be rich, and she al­so hopes to make a mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tion to the coun­try. She en­cour­ages young women in­ter­est­ed in STEM to “stick with it, net­work, and don’t let any­body or any­thing hold you back.”