[Pansy-Mae]

In my opinion, yes. But this is controversial. PC is made industrially from diosgenin. Wild yam and fenugreek contain diosgenin. Originally, people started taking diosgenin hoping it would increase progesterone, but no direct biochemical path has been found that makes progesterone from diosgenin.

However, there are studies that see an increase in serum progesterone and prolactin from oral diosgenin.
http://journals.sfu.ca/africanem/index.php/ajtcam/article/viewArticle/868
http://www.sid.ir/En/ViewPaper.asp?ID=32334&varStr=27;AL-CHALABII%20I.;YAKHTEH;SUMMER%202005;7;SUPPLEMENT%201;50;50

Isabelle,
I don't know if you read the discussion paper that was part of the overall document that you quoted in a post recently about phyto-content of various herbs? ( http://www.cancersupportivecare.com/estrogenherbdata.html#table3 )
There is a paragraph in it that says:

"Many of the diosgenin-containing herbal products (Dioscorea-wild yam) are being sold under the guise that they are progesterone precursors and will be converted in vivo into progesterone and other steroids (DHEA). None of the saliva from women reporting consumption of diosgenin containing herbs was found to possess any progesterone bioactivity despite high levels of PR-binding components in some of them (20%-30%). Moreover, all of the saliva from the 11 women who were using diosgenin-containing products also contained very low levels of progesterone, determined by RIA (mean 19, range 5-34 pg/ml progesterone). Hence, our preliminary data support recent arguments (31,32) and uncontrolled pilot clinical studies (3) that diosgenin is not converted to progesterone in the human body."

So not only is there no known pathway to do the diosgenin conversion in the body, but their saliva (serum) assay doesn't detect any increased progesterone levels after ingesting diosgenin, either. This is totally at odds with the two papers you quoted above!

I guess the jury is STILL out on this one!