WASHINGTON -- Doctors in private practice have teamed up with those at National Institutes of Health to study a rare medical condition in young women.

Carmen Simpson was a seemingly healthy 21-year-old when she started to experience the first symptoms of menopause, reported WRC-TV in Washington, D.C.

She didn't have a clue what was happening to her, and neither did the doctors.

"For two years, I was misdiagnosed. ... I knew there was something really wrong but didn't know how to put my finger on it," Simpson said.

"I knew there was something really wrong but didn't know how to put my finger on it." Carmen Simpson, Premature Ovarian Failure patient

Then she finally found out what was wrong. The doctors called it Premature Ovarian Failure. She also learned that there was no cure and no standard treatment for this unusual condition.

Someone suggested she call the National Institutes of Health. At the NIH, gynecologist Dr. Larry Nelson told Simpson she was not alone in her struggle.

"More than half of these women see three different doctors before somebody does the blood test to find out this is the problem," Nelson said.

Nelson left a private practice to become a research doctor at the NIH 16 years ago.

He's been studying Premature Ovarian Failure ever since. It's a rare condition, affecting nearly 250,000 American women.

The private industry has little profit motive to study it, but the team at the NIH is offering new hope to hundreds of patients like Simpson, who had nowhere else to turn.

Along with her NIH doctors, Simpson has learned a lot about POF over the years. They discovered, for example, that a lot of women with POF experience dry eyes.

Simpson can be tested and treated for that, and at the same time, she's seeing Nelson. Back home in Cincinnati, her doctor might not have connected the two, and she'd be seeing another specialist.

These are the symptoms of Premature Ovarian Failure:

Absent or irregular periods
Hot flashes
Irritability
Poor concentration
Infertility

Simpson became a mother through adoption, and hormone replacement therapy has dramatically helped her POF symptoms. Even better, she knows that her role in POF research will likely help future generations of women with this rare condition get better treatment.

"This is the place to come where you have the most updated info, and you know that you're on the edge of the best treatment that you can get," Simpson said.

The NIH has several Premature Ovarian Failure studies under way right now. If you think you could be a candidate, call (877) 206-0911 or visit http://pof.nichd.nih.gov.