Gender Gap Persists in Studies, Women's Health Ignored

Research and clinical trials often fail to include women and continue to ignore women's unique health issues that can alter important data, according to a new report.

The report, scheduled to be presented at a national Women's Health Summit this Monday, provides evidence that indicates that women remain unrepresented in medical research and clinical trials.

Despite a law issued in 1993 that mandates that women be included in government-funded trials, researchers from The Connors Center for Women's Health at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts say that women subjects in the United States are consistently overlooked in research. For instance, according to their research, less than one third of cardiovascular clinical trial participants are women; and yet  cardiovascular disease remains to be the number one cause of death in U.S. women.

More data indicates that less than 45 percent of animal studies on human-related issues, such as stress reaction and depression, use female animals in their tests; and yet major or clinical depression remains to be one of the leading adverse psychological conditions in women worldwide.

What's worse, even in trials that do think to include women, it has been found that only one third of them consider sex-specific outcome, despite how much is known about the gender-specific differences in human health.

Lung cancer is also slated to be discussed, researchers claiming that a large majority of modern lung cancer research fails to include gender-specific factors when conducting data analysis, despite the fact that it had been acknowledge in the scientific community that lung cancer behalves differently in nonsmoking women than in nonsmoking men.

The researchers backing this presentation hope to show that gender-specific hormone levels are important factors to include in any scientific research, as it has recently become common suspicion that chemicals in the human body and brain play larger roles than once thought when reacting to disorder or disease.

The report as well as undisclosed recommendations/guidelines for researchers will be presented at the national Women's Heath Summit in Boston, Massachusetts on March 3. An abstract of the presentation will be able to be found online at Brigham and Women's Hospital website.

The aforementioned data should be regarded as preliminary findings until they have been published in a nationally recognized peer-reviewed scientific journal.