Lauer Amanda Marie, Schrode Katrina Marie
Department of Otolaryngology-HNS and Center for Hearing and Balance, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, United States.
Noise Health. 2017 Sep-Oct;19(90):207-212. doi: 10.4103/nah.NAH_12_17.
Sex differences in brain biochemistry, physiology, structure, and function have been gaining increasing attention in the scientific community. Males and females can have different responses to medications, diseases, and environmental variables. A small number of the approximately 7500 studies of noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) have identified sex differences, but the mechanisms and characterization of these differences have not been thoroughly studied. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued a mandate in 2015 to include sex as a biological variable in all NIH-funded research beginning in January 2016.
In the present study, the representation of sex as a biological variable in preclinical and basic studies of NIHL was quantified for a 5-year period from January 2011 to December 2015 prior to the implementation of the NIH mandate.
The analysis of 210 basic and preclinical studies showed that when sex is specified, experiments are predominantly performed on male animals.
This bias is present in studies completed in the United States and foreign institutions, and the proportion of studies using only male participants has actually increased over the 5-year period examined.
These results underscore the need to invest resources in studying NIHL in both sexes to better understand how sex shapes the outcomes and to optimize treatment and prevention strategies.
大脑生物化学、生理学、结构和功能方面的性别差异在科学界日益受到关注。男性和女性对药物、疾病及环境变量可能有不同反应。在约7500项关于噪声性听力损失（NIHL）的研究中，仅有少数研究发现了性别差异，但这些差异的机制和特征尚未得到充分研究。美国国立卫生研究院（NIH）于2015年发布指令，要求从2016年1月起在所有由NIH资助的研究中将性别作为一个生物学变量纳入考量。
在本研究中，在NIH指令实施之前，对2011年1月至2015年12月这5年期间NIHL临床前和基础研究中性别作为生物学变量的体现进行了量化。
对210项基础和临床前研究的分析表明，当明确性别时，实验主要在雄性动物身上进行。
这种偏差在美国和国外机构完成的研究中均存在，并且在研究的5年期间，仅使用雄性受试者的研究比例实际上有所增加。
这些结果强调了需要投入资源对两性的NIHL进行研究，以便更好地理解性别如何影响结果，并优化治疗和预防策略。
