Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholar at University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA.
Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2011 Jan;35(3):565-72. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2010.07.002. Epub 2010 Jul 8.
Female mammals have long been neglected in biomedical research. The NIH mandated enrollment of women in human clinical trials in 1993, but no similar initiatives exist to foster research on female animals. We reviewed sex bias in research on mammals in 10 biological fields for 2009 and their historical precedents. Male bias was evident in 8 disciplines and most prominent in neuroscience, with single-sex studies of male animals outnumbering those of females 5.5 to 1. In the past half-century, male bias in non-human studies has increased while declining in human studies. Studies of both sexes frequently fail to analyze results by sex. Underrepresentation of females in animal models of disease is also commonplace, and our understanding of female biology is compromised by these deficiencies. The majority of articles in several journals are conducted on rats and mice to the exclusion of other useful animal models. The belief that non-human female mammals are intrinsically more variable than males and too troublesome for routine inclusion in research protocols is without foundation. We recommend that when only one sex is studied, this should be indicated in article titles, and that funding agencies favor proposals that investigate both sexes and analyze data by sex.
长期以来，雌性哺乳动物一直被忽视在生物医学研究之外。NIH 于 1993 年规定在人类临床试验中纳入女性，但没有类似的举措来促进针对雌性动物的研究。我们回顾了 2009 年 10 个生物学领域中针对哺乳动物的研究中的性别偏见及其历史先例。在 8 个学科中存在明显的男性偏见，其中神经科学最为突出，雄性动物的单性研究数量是雌性动物的 5.5 倍。在过去的半个世纪中，非人类研究中的男性偏见增加了，而人类研究中的男性偏见则减少了。经常有研究未能按性别分析结果。在疾病动物模型中，雌性动物的代表性不足也很常见，这些缺陷损害了我们对女性生物学的理解。在几个期刊上，大多数文章都是基于大鼠和小鼠进行的，而排除了其他有用的动物模型。认为非人类雌性哺乳动物天生比雄性更具变异性，而且在研究方案中过于麻烦而无法常规纳入的观点是没有根据的。我们建议，当仅研究一种性别时，这应在文章标题中注明，并且资助机构应支持同时研究两种性别的提案，并按性别分析数据。
