Sex differences in health and disease

Women's Health Research at Yale initiates and supports health research focusing on women's health and on sex differences in health and disease. Our program is dedicated to improving the health and healthcare of all individuals through scientific knowledge translated into medical and personal practice.

Why Focus on Women's Health and Sex Differences?

It was not until 1993 that the National Institutes of Health, the largest source of biomedical research funding in this country, began requiring researchers to consider including women as participants in clinical research studies. In fact, prior to the mid-1990s, as indicated in a 1994 National Academy of Sciences report, "fully two-thirds of all diseases that affect both women and men had been studied exclusively in men."

Women's Health Research at Yale was founded to address these disparities by initiating and nurturing groundbreaking research focused on the health of women and sex-specific aspects of health and disease.

Women were excluded from most medical research studies mainly because of:

• Concerns about exposing women to experimental risk during childbearing years;
• Misconceptions that certain disorders, such as cardiovascular disease, do not effect women to the extent they do men; and
• Inaccurate assumptions that women are affected by health conditions in the same way that men are affected.

In addition to women not broadly participating as subjects in research studies, when women were included, data traditionally were not analyzed by sex.

Women are hospitalized at higher rates than men, use more medications and report feeling less healthful than men.

While women live longer than men, living longer does not necessarily mean living better. Women also have higher rates of disorder-producing conditions, such as domestic violence, childhood sexual abuse, and poverty.

Currently, a growing body of scientific evidence in virtually every field - i.e. as generated by Women's Health Research at Yale - is challenging past assumptions and obstacles, and alerting us to the critical importance of considering the biological and psychological effects of sex and gender on health and disease.

Going forward, it is important to understand disorders that:

• Are prevalent in women such as:
  Depression, Breast cancer, Osteoporosis, Eating disorders, Lupus
  
  
• Are becoming more common for women such as:
  Smoking, Workplace stress, HIV exposure
  
  
• Are unique to women such as:
  Ovarian cancer, Cardiovascular risk in pregnancy, Postpartum disorders, Menopausal conditions
  
  
• Affect men and women differently such as:
  Acute coronary syndromes, Drug addiction, Civilian trauma