Females still routinely left out of biomedical research — and in analyses
▻https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/09/females-are-still-routinely-left-out-of-biomedical-research-and-ignored-in
“Given the significant sex differences from biology to behavior, excluding females means one cannot assume that any findings would apply to females,” she said. “Moreover, it is possible that by doing a sex-based analysis, scientific breakthroughs could occur that could be important for all people by understanding how certain interventions vary by sex.”
Ambien and other sleeping pills are examples of drugs with markedly different effects on men and women. Because women metabolize the drug more slowly, they can still be too drowsy to drive eight hours after taking it. The Food and Drug Administration eventually cut the dose for women in half based on these findings.
And in cancer, for reasons that aren’t yet understood, standard therapy for glioblastoma appears to work better in women than in men who have this kind of brain tumor, according to a study published last year.
It wasn’t until 1993 that the National Institutes of Health required the inclusion of women and ethnic and racial minorities in clinical research studies. That policy followed decades of data culled only from men primarily of European ancestry, despite a growing realization that biology differs in important ways between men and women and among racial and ethnic groups.