Addictive Behaviors Department, Local Health Authority, Trento, Italy.
Institute of Neuroscience-Cagliari, National Research Council, Italy.
Eur J Pharmacol. 2021 Apr 5;896:173895. doi: 10.1016/j.ejphar.2021.173895. Epub 2021 Jan 26.
In both animals and human beings, males and females differ in their genetic background and hormonally driven behaviour and show sex-related differences in brain activity and response to internal and external stimuli. Gender-specific medicine has been a neglected dimension of medicine for long time, and only in the last three decades it is receiving the due scientific and clinical attention. Research has recently begun to identify factors that could provide a neurobiological basis for gender-based differences in health and disease and to point to gonadal hormones as important determinants of male-female differences. Animal studies have been of great help in understanding factors contributing to sex-dependent differences and sex hormones action. Here we review and discuss evidence provided by clinical and animal studies in the last two decades showing gender (in humans) and sex (in animals) differences in selected psychiatric disorders, namely eating disorders (anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder), schizophrenia, mood disorders (anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder) and neurodevelopmental disorders (autism spectrum disorders, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder).
在动物和人类中，男性和女性在遗传背景和激素驱动的行为上存在差异，并在大脑活动和对内部及外部刺激的反应方面表现出与性别相关的差异。性别医学长期以来一直是医学被忽视的一个方面，直到最近三十年才开始受到应有的科学和临床关注。研究最近开始确定可能为健康和疾病中基于性别的差异提供神经生物学基础的因素，并指出性腺激素是男女差异的重要决定因素。动物研究在理解导致性别依赖性差异和性激素作用的因素方面发挥了重要作用。在这里，我们回顾和讨论了过去二十年的临床和动物研究提供的证据，这些证据表明在某些精神疾病（即饮食失调症（神经性厌食症、神经性贪食症、暴食症）、精神分裂症、情绪障碍（焦虑、抑郁、强迫症）和神经发育障碍（自闭症谱系障碍、注意力缺陷/多动障碍）中存在性别（在人类中）和性别（在动物中）差异。
