Shruthi Mahalingaiah, MD, MS

About

Shruthi Mahalingaiah is co-principal investigator of the Apple Women’s Health Study, a research cohort built from iPhone and Apple Watch data, with participants contributing cycle, symptom and metabolic information over long stretches of time. That is an unusual résumé line for a fertility doctor, and it changes how she practices: she works from large observational datasets rather than only from the cases in her own clinic, and her questions are the population-level ones — how cycle regularity, body composition and environmental exposure track with the ability to conceive.

The clinical half of her job is narrower and very specific: she directs the PCOS and ovulation disorders clinic at Mass General, where the everyday problem is a patient who does not ovulate reliably. Management there is endocrine before it is reproductive — insulin resistance, weight, menstrual regularity, then ovulation induction, IUI or IVF — and she holds a named professorship at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Mark and Catherine Winkler Associate Professorship of Environmental Reproductive and Women’s Health, with a joint appointment in its Department of Environmental Health. Her air pollution research sits in that same space, examining what inhaling particulate matter does to ovarian and reproductive function.

Her third role is administrative in a way that matters to patients: she is the center’s clinical research director, the physician responsible for the trials running through the fertility center. Her training path is Middlebury College, Harvard Medical School, obstetrics and gynecology residency in the combined Massachusetts General/Brigham and Women’s program, and an REI fellowship at Brigham and Women’s, with a master’s in epidemiology from Boston University School of Public Health. She received the Endocrine Society’s Early Investigator Award in 2016. Board certification is not stated on her profile, which records training, faculty and program roles.

Clinical Expertise

• PCOS and ovulation induction: restoring regular ovulation with oral or injectable induction agents, metabolic treatment and cycle timing, as the director of the center’s dedicated clinic
• Insulin resistance and metabolic management in infertility: the endocrine work that precedes and improves stimulation response
• Environmental exposure counseling: what is known and not known about air pollution, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and shift work for someone trying to conceive
• Clinical trial access: as clinical research director, she is the route onto studies of ovulation and fertility outcomes at this center
• IVF and egg freezing for ovulatory disorders, with ovarian hyperstimulation risk managed differently in high-responding PCOS patients
• Big-data menstrual health: cycle and symptom patterns analyzed at population scale through the digital cohort she co-leads

Why Choose Dr. Mahalingaiah

The PCOS clinic has a director. PCOS is the commonest cause of anovulatory infertility and is routinely undertreated as a hormone-and-metabolic problem. Here it is a named clinic with one accountable physician.

She holds two schools’ appointments. Clinical assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and an endowed associate professorship at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, in environmental health — an epidemiologist’s training behind the treatment recommendations.

Trials run through her. Patients interested in study participation are dealing with the person who directs that program rather than asking whether something exists.

Recognized early in her research career. The Endocrine Society’s Early Investigator Award (2016) is a named, dated honor in her field.

Professional Affiliations

American Society for Reproductive Medicine; Endocrine Society. Clinical Research Director, Mass General Fertility Center, and Director of its PCOS clinic. Mark and Catherine Winkler Associate Professor of Environmental Reproductive and Women’s Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, with a joint appointment in the Department of Environmental Health. Assistant professor faculty at Harvard Medical School in obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology. Practices at the Yawkey Center, Suite 10A, Boston.

Suitable For

• Patients with PCOS whose cycles are irregular or absent and who need metabolic as well as fertility management
• High responders needing stimulation protocols built around ovarian hyperstimulation risk
• Anyone wanting a second look at why ovulation is not happening — thyroid, prolactin, insulin, weight and ovarian reserve assessed together
• Patients interested in enrolling in a fertility or ovulation study
• People worried about occupational or environmental exposures — pollution, chemicals, hours — and how much weight to give them