Women’s Health Harmed as Medical Studies Ignore Gender

[KitSileya]

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-03-03/women-s-health-harmed-as-medical-studies-miss-gender-differences

Scientists continue to neglect gender in medical research, endangering women’s health by focusing on males in studies that shape the treatment of disease, a report found.

The lack of attention to gender differences occurs at all stages of research, from lab to doctor’s office, according to the report released today by the Connors Center for Women'€™s Health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and the Jacobs Institute of Women'€™s Health at George Washington University in Washington. Animal and human studies typically use male subjects and, even when females are included, researchers fail to analyze and report results by sex, the authors said.

“We’ve got to do the work and change the way science is done and translated to clinical care,” Paula Johnson, executive director of the Connors Center, said in a telephone interview. “Until we do that, we are putting women’s health at risk.”

Congress passed the 1993 National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act requiring that NIH-funded biomedical research with human subjects include and analyze the effects on woman and ethnic minorities. The legislation doesn't extend beyond research funded by the NIH and doesn't apply to animal or cellular studies.

The article goes on to give two examples of areas where this neglect harms women, heart disease and depression, and then suggest that a major improvement would simply be to look at study results according to gender too, which wouldn't cost a thing. It would mean that they would have to admit that they were neglecting women, though.....

[redqueen]

1. And we've known this for so long...

And laws have been passed to try to change it...

Yet, still...

[ismnotwasm]

2. I find men and women are treated about the same

Which reinforces what the article is saying; for instance in my field, Transplant-- it's pretty standardized. One young woman ended up having to have an abortion because one of the meds was extremely tetarogenic. She somehow was not counseled on this medication. While this is not common, it happens.

I think depression is under treated everywhere, but I'm stunned at that statistic, although not surprised. While I enjoy what I do, as a hospital nurse, getting to know patients and getting them treated for depressing is a lot more difficult than when I worked in long term care. What I do see is women being dismissed as 'borderline' or past abuse with diagnosed PTSD not factored into behavior, care or healing rates. At least not until the situation is out of control, when early intervention would have made a difference

Very interesting article, thank you