Doctors are reporting the rare case of a postmenopausal woman who developed severe virilisation from an unusual cause — a common and benign ovarian tumour.

The woman, 71, presented to the outpatient endocrinology department at the University Hospital in Brussels, Belgium, with a one-year history of rapidly progressive androgenic alopecia, clitoromegaly and male pattern pubic hair growth.

The woman, who had given birth to two children, had undergone an abdominal hysterectomy at 48 due to menorrhagia caused by uterine fibroids and experienced menopause at 52.

Her medical history was unremarkable and there was no relevant family history, the doctors wrote in BMJ Case Reports.