Department of Social Medicine and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
Department of Public Policy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
J Womens Health (Larchmt). 2021 Oct;30(10):1395-1405. doi: 10.1089/jwh.2020.8997. Epub 2021 Apr 8.
In 2015, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) established a policy on sex as a biological variable (SABV) in an effort to address the overrepresentation of men and male animals in biomedical research and the lack of attention to sex-based responses to medical treatments. However, questions remain regarding how U.S. biomedical researchers perceive the impact of the SABV policy on their own research and on translational science more broadly. A national survey of U.S. scientists who use vertebrate animals in their research was conducted. Respondents were asked how they select and use animal species as model organisms as well as how they perceive the impact of the SABV policy on their research practices. Almost all respondents reported that they had previously heard of the NIH SABV policy, and over one-third had altered their study designs to comply with the policy. There were robust differences in perceptions of the SABV policy based on researchers' primary species of model organism. However, there was no significant difference in the likelihood of researchers analyzing their results by sex based on whether they had received recent NIH funding. While many researchers report adhering to the SABV policy requirements, more work needs to be done to ensure that the policy is being evenly applied to researchers using all types of animal models and that researchers adhere to the policy after receiving NIH funding, particularly in terms of reporting on and analyzing SABV in their study findings for publication.
2015 年，美国国立卫生研究院（NIH）制定了一项关于将性别作为生物学变量（SABV）的政策，旨在解决生物医学研究中男性和雄性动物代表性过高以及对基于性别的医疗反应缺乏关注的问题。然而，人们仍然对美国生物医学研究人员如何看待 SABV 政策对他们自己的研究以及更广泛的转化科学的影响存在疑问。对在美国使用脊椎动物进行研究的科学家进行了一项全国性调查。要求受访者说明他们如何选择和使用动物物种作为模式生物，以及他们如何看待 SABV 政策对他们的研究实践的影响。几乎所有受访者都报告说，他们之前听说过 NIH 的 SABV 政策，超过三分之一的人已经改变了他们的研究设计以符合该政策。基于研究人员的主要模式生物物种，他们对 SABV 政策的看法存在明显差异。然而，根据他们是否最近获得 NIH 资助，研究人员是否基于性别分析研究结果的可能性没有显著差异。虽然许多研究人员报告遵守 SABV 政策要求，但仍需要做更多的工作，以确保该政策公平地适用于使用所有类型动物模型的研究人员，并且研究人员在获得 NIH 资助后遵守该政策，特别是在报告和分析研究结果中 SABV 以用于发表。
