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- Recent research in laboratory medicine has revealed crucial differences between men and women with regard to cardiovascular illness, cancer, liver disease, osteoporosis, and in the area of pharmacology.
- At the dawn of the third millennium, medical researchers still know very little about gender-specific differences in illness, particularly when it comes to disease symptoms, influencing social and psychological factors, and the ramifications of these differences for treatment and prevention.
- Medical research conducted over the past 40 years has focused almost exclusively on male patients.
Examples of differences:
- Typically perceived as a male illness, cardiovascular disease often displays markedly different symptoms among women.
- Colon cancer is the second most common form of cancer among men and women. However, women suffer this illness at a later stage in life. Furthermore, colon tumors typically have a different location in women, and they respond better to specific chemical treatments.
- [The paper also shows]...variation between men and women in the pharmacology of aspirin and other substances.
Conclusions:
- The study concludes that additional and more far-reaching clinical investigations of gender differences are needed in order to eliminate fundamental inequalities between men and women in the treatment of disease.
(Baggio, Corsini, Floreani, Giannini, & Zagonel, 2013). Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (CCLM).
Access the full paper here.
