In 2001, the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) report, “Exploring the Biological Contributions to Human Health: Does Sex Matter?” advocated for better understanding of the differences in human diseases between the...
Authors: Pamela Ouyang, Nanette K. Wenger, Doris Taylor, Janet W. Rich-Edwards, Meir Steiner, Leslee J. Shaw, Sarah L. Berga, Virginia M. Miller and Noel Bairey Merz
Surfactant protein A (SP-A) contributes to lung immunity by regulating inflammation and responses to microorganisms invading the lung. The huge genetic variability of SP-A in humans implies that this protein i...
Authors: Nikolaos Tsotakos, David S. Phelps, Christopher M. Yengo, Vernon M. Chinchilli and Joanna Floros
Human pigmentation is a polygenic quantitative trait with high heritability. In addition to genetic factors, it has been shown that pigmentation can be modulated by oestrogens and androgens via up- or down-reg...
Authors: Barbara Hernando, Maider Ibarrola-Villava, Lara P. Fernandez, Maria Peña-Chilet, Marta Llorca-Cardeñosa, Sara S. Oltra, Santos Alonso, Maria Dolores Boyano, Conrado Martinez-Cadenas and Gloria Ribas
Acute ozone (O3) exposure has known deleterious effects on the respiratory system and has been linked with respiratory disease and infection. Inflammatory lung disease induced by air pollution has demonstrated gr...
Authors: Vikas Mishra, Susan L. DiAngelo and Patricia Silveyra
The policy announcement by the National Institutes of Health that sex should be considered as a relevant variable in preclinical research has sparked considerable debate. This debate has largely centered on sp...
Prior to the start of cross-sex hormone therapy (CSH), androgenic progestins are often used to induce amenorrhea in female to male (FtM) pubertal adolescents with gender dysphoria (GD). The aim of this single-...
Authors: Lloyd J. W. Tack, Margarita Craen, Karlien Dhondt, Heidi Vanden Bossche, Jolien Laridaen and Martine Cools
Translating policy into action is a complex task, with much debate surrounding the process whereby US and Canadian health funding agencies intend to integrate sex and gender science as an integral component of...
Authors: Cara Tannenbaum, Jaclyn M. Schwarz, Janine A. Clayton, Geert J. de Vries and Casey Sullivan
Inhibition of irrelevant responses is an important aspect of cognitive control of a goal-directed behavior. Females and males show different levels of susceptibility to neuropsychological disorders such as imp...
Authors: Farshad A. Mansouri, Daniel J. Fehring, Alexandra Gaillard, Shapour Jaberzadeh and Helena Parkington
Demographics influence kidney stone risk and the type of stone that is more likely to form. Common kidney stone risk factors include having a low urine volume and a high urine concentration. The goal of the cu...
Authors: Majuran Perinpam, Erin B. Ware, Jennifer A. Smith, Stephen T. Turner, Sharon L. R. Kardia and John C. Lieske
The male-specific region of chromosome-Y (MSY) contributes to phenotypes outside of testis development and has a high rate of evolution between mammalian species. With a lack of genomic crossover, MSY is one o...
Authors: Jeremy W. Prokop, Shirng-Wern Tsaih, Allison B. Faber, Shannon Boehme, Adam C. Underwood, Samuel Troyer, Lauren Playl, Amy Milsted, Monte E. Turner, Daniel Ely, Almir S. Martins, Marek Tutaj, Jozef Lazar, Melinda R. Dwinell and Howard J. Jacob
High-fat diets promoting obesity/type-2 diabetes can impair physiology and cognitive performance, although sex-dependent comparisons of these impairments are rarely made. Transient reductions in Ca2+-dependent af...
Authors: Erica L. Underwood and Lucien T. Thompson
Painful bladder syndrome/interstitial cystitis (PBS/IC) is a chronic disorder that is commonly seen in women who report a history of adversity in early life. Here, we test the hypothesis that early life stress...
Authors: Ehsan Mohammadi, Dawn K. Prusator, Eleanor Healing, Robert Hurst, Rheal A. Towner, Amy B. Wisniewski and Beverley Greenwood-Van Meerveld
The new policy from the National Institutes of Health to encourage grant applicants to consider studying both females and males in preclinical biological experiments has been met with support and opposition. H...
Feeding behavior is regulated through an intricate array of anorexic and orexigenic hormones acting on the central nervous system (CNS). Some of these hormones may have differential effects in males and female...
Authors: Jennifer E. Richard, Rozita H. Anderberg, Lorena López-Ferreras, Kajsa Olandersson and Karolina P. Skibicka
In rats, a sexually dimorphic spinal gastrin-releasing peptide (GRP) system in the lumbosacral spinal cord projects to spinal centers that control erection and ejaculation. This system controls the sexual func...
Current evidence indicates that estrogens, in particular 17β-estradiol (E2), play a crucial role in the gender bias of autoimmune diseases although the underlying molecular mechanisms have not yet been fully e...
Authors: Angela Maselli, Fabrizio Conti, Cristiano Alessandri, Tania Colasanti, Cristiana Barbati, Marta Vomero, Laura Ciarlo, Mario Patrizio, Francesca Romana Spinelli, Elena Ortona, Guido Valesini and Marina Pierdominici
Renewed attention has been directed to the functions of the Y chromosome in the central nervous system during early human male development, due to the recent proposed involvement in neurodevelopmental diseases...
Authors: Martin M. Johansson, Elin Lundin, Xiaoyan Qian, Mohammadreza Mirzazadeh, Jonatan Halvardson, Elisabeth Darj, Lars Feuk, Mats Nilsson and Elena Jazin
Maternal deprivation (MD) during neonatal life can have long-term effects on metabolism and behavior, with males and females responding differently. We previously reported that MD during 24 h at postnatal day ...
Authors: Virginia Mela, Francisca Díaz, María Jesús Vázquez, Jesús Argente, Manuel Tena-Sempere, Maria-Paz Viveros and Julie A. Chowen
Brain morphology significantly differs between the sexes. It has been shown before that some of these differences are attributable to the sex-specific hormonal milieu. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) ...
Authors: Matthias K. Auer, Rainer Hellweg, Peer Briken, Günter K. Stalla, Guy T’Sjoen and Johannes Fuss
X chromosome inactivation is the epigenetic silencing of the majority of the genes on one of the X chromosomes in XX therian mammals. In humans, approximately 15 % of genes consistently escape from this inacti...
Authors: Bradley P. Balaton, Allison M. Cotton and Carolyn J. Brown
In basal conditions, vascular smooth muscle cells freshly isolated from aortas of male and female rats display marked sex differences in terms of redox balance and susceptibility to ultraviolet radiation-induc...
Authors: E. Straface, R. Vona, I. Campesi and F. Franconi
In addition to its classical effects on opioid receptors, morphine can activate glia and stimulate the production of pro-inflammatory immune molecules which in turn counteract the analgesic properties of morph...
Authors: Caitlin K. Posillico, Laurne S. Terasaki, Staci D. Bilbo and Jaclyn M. Schwarz
Although sex differences in heart failure (HF) prevalence and severity have been recognized, its molecular mechanisms are poorly understood. We used a tachycardia-induced cardiomyopathy model to determine the ...
Authors: Liliana Kiczak, Alicja Tomaszek, Urszula Pasławska, Jacek Bania, Agnieszka Noszczyk-Nowak, Piotr Skrzypczak, Robert Pasławski, Maciej Zacharski, Adrian Janiszewski, Piotr Kuropka, Piotr Ponikowski and Ewa A. Jankowska
Naked mole-rats are eusocial mammals, living in large colonies with a single breeding female and 1–3 breeding males. Breeders are socially dominant, and only the breeders exhibit traditional sex differences in...
Authors: Ashlyn Swift-Gallant, Kaiguo Mo, Deane E. Peragine, D. Ashley Monks and Melissa M. Holmes
An extensive assessment investigating the association between sex differences and neonatal outcomes is lacking. In the current study, we estimated the correlation of gender with adverse birth outcomes in a lar...
Authors: Yi-Hao Weng, Chun-Yuh Yang and Ya-Wen Chiu
Diabetes has been shown to be significantly associated with poor outcome after stroke. However, the sex differences in stroke outcome among patients with diabetes are unknown. Therefore, we aimed to assess the...
Authors: Wenjuan Zhao, Zhongping An, Yan Hong, Guanen Zhou, Bin liu, Jingjing Guo, Yuanju Yang, Xianjia Ning and Jinghua Wang
Heart rate variability (HRV), blood pressure variability, (BPV) and heart rate recovery (HRR) are measures that provide insight regarding autonomic function. Maximal exercise can affect autonomic function, and...
Authors: Rebecca M. Kappus, Sushant M. Ranadive, Huimin Yan, Abbi D. Lane-Cordova, Marc D. Cook, Peng Sun, I. Shevon Harvey, Kenneth R. Wilund, Jeffrey A. Woods and Bo Fernhall
Tissue infiltration by neutrophils during acute inflammatory states causes substantial tissue injury. While the magnitude of tissue neutrophil accumulation in innate immune responses is profoundly greater in m...
Authors: Shimona Madalli, Martina Beyrau, James Whiteford, Johan Duchene, Inderpal Singh Nandhra, Nimesh S. A. Patel, Madhur P. Motwani, Derek W. Gilroy, Christoph Thiemermann, Sussan Nourshargh and Ramona S. Scotland
Teleost fishes exhibit remarkably diverse and plastic sexual developmental patterns. One of the most astonishing is the rapid socially controlled female-to-male (protogynous) sex change observed in bluehead wr...
Authors: Hui Liu, Melissa S. Lamm, Kim Rutherford, Michael A. Black, John R. Godwin and Neil J. Gemmell
Neuroimaging studies in younger adults have demonstrated sex differences in brain processing of painful experimental stimuli. Such differences may contribute to findings that women suffer disproportionately fr...
Authors: Todd B. Monroe, John C. Gore, Stephen P. Bruehl, Margaret M. Benningfield, Mary S. Dietrich, Li Min Chen, Paul Newhouse, Roger Fillingim, BettyAnn Chodkowski, Sebastian Atalla, Julian Arrieta, Stephen M. Damon, Jennifer Urbano Blackford and Ronald L. Cowan
Despite the growing numbers of men and women with opioid use disorder in Canada, sex-specific issues in treatment have not been re-examined in the current population of patients with opioid addiction. We aimed...
Authors: Monica Bawor, Brittany B. Dennis, Michael Varenbut, Jeff Daiter, David C. Marsh, Carolyn Plater, Andrew Worster, Meir Steiner, Rebecca Anglin, Guillaume Pare, Dipika Desai, Lehana Thabane and Zainab Samaan
While many sex differences in structure and function of the mammalian brain have been described, the molecular correlates of these differences are not broadly known. Also unknown is how sex differences at the ...
Authors: Aaron Block, Md. Mahiuddin Ahmed, A. Ranjitha Dhanasekaran, Suhong Tong and Katheleen J. Gardiner
Dopamine (DA) neurons in the anteroventral periventricular nucleus (AVPV) in the preoptic area (POA) of mammals express estrogen receptors, regulate luteinizing hormone (LH) secretion, and show distinct sexual...
Authors: Soham Saha, Saurabh Patil, Uday Singh, Omprakash Singh and Praful S. Singru
Women at risk of preterm delivery receive magnesium sulfate (MgSO4) in the pre-delivery phase to reduce their child’s risk of neurodevelopmental complications associated with preterm birth. However, the mechanism...
Authors: Clint Gray, Mark H. Vickers, Rebecca M. Dyson, Clare M. Reynolds and Mary J. Berry
Autoimmune diseases (ADs) are estimated to affect between 5 and 8 % of the US population, and approximately 80 % of these patients are women. Sjögren’s syndrome (SS) is an AD that occurs predominately in women...
Authors: Jessica E. Brandt, Roberta Priori, Guido Valesini and DeLisa Fairweather
The majority of preclinical biomedical research involves studies of males rather than females. It is thought that researchers have avoided females based on the idea that female traits are more variable than th...
Imbalance in lipid metabolism and membrane lipid homeostasis has been observed in numerous diseases including heart failure and cardiotoxicity. Growing evidence links phospholipid alterations especially cardio...
Authors: Maryline Moulin, Audrey Solgadi, Vladimir Veksler, Anne Garnier, Renée Ventura-Clapier and Pierre Chaminade
Females experience poorer recovery after ischemic stroke compared to males, even after controlling for age and stroke severity. IL-10 is an anti-inflammatory cytokine produced by T regulatory cells and Th2 CD4+ h...
Authors: Sarah E. Conway, Meaghan Roy-O’Reilly, Brett Friedler, Ilene Staff, Gilbert Fortunato and Louise D. McCullough
Juvenile social play is observed in many mammalian species, and its disruption in several neuropsychiatric disorders has greatly increased interest in understanding the origins and sources of variability in th...
Authors: Kathryn J. Argue and Margaret M. McCarthy
There are fundamental aspects of the control of metabolic homeostasis that are regulated differently in males and females. This sex asymmetry represents an evolutionary paradigm for females to resist the loss ...
Most writing on sexual differentiation of the mammalian brain (including our own) considers just two organs: the gonads and the brain. This perspective, which leaves out all other body parts, misleads us in se...
Mechanistic data to support health claims is often generated using rodent models, and the influence of prebiotic supplementation has largely been evaluated using male rodents. Given that sex-based differences ...
Authors: Padmaja Shastri, Justin McCarville, Martin Kalmokoff, Stephen P.J. Brooks and Julia M. Green-Johnson
Abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAAs) occur predominately in males. However, AAAs in females have rapid growth rates and rupture at smaller sizes. Mechanisms contributing to AAA progression in females are undefine...
Authors: Sean E. Thatcher, Xuan Zhang, Shannon Woody, Yu Wang, Yasir Alsiraj, Richard Charnigo, Alan Daugherty and Lisa A. Cassis
DNA methylation, which is most frequently the transference of a methyl group to the 5-carbon position of the cytosine in a CpG dinucleotide, plays an important role in both normal development and diseases. To ...
Sex differences in incidence of cardiovascular disease may reflect age-associated intravascular cellular activation resulting in shedding of cell membrane-derived bioactive microvesicles (MV or microparticles)...
Authors: Callie M Gustafson, Alex J Shepherd, Virginia M Miller and Muthuvel Jayachandran
The incidence of cardiovascular disease rises dramatically with age in both men and women. Because a woman’s risk of cardiovascular disease rises markedly after the onset of menopause, there has been growing i...
Sex differences in pituitary growth hormone (GH) are well documented and coordinate maturation and growth. GH and its receptor are also produced in the brain where they may impact cognitive function and synapt...
Authors: Kayla M Quinnies, Paul J Bonthuis, Erin P Harris, Savera RJ Shetty and Emilie F Rissman
In mammals, white adipose tissue (WAT) stores fat and brown adipose tissue (BAT) dissipates fat to produce heat. Several studies showed that females have more active BAT. Members of the bone morphogenetic prot...
Authors: Aldo Grefhorst, Johanna C van den Beukel, E Leonie AF van Houten, Jacobie Steenbergen, Jenny A Visser and Axel PN Themmen
Sexually dimorphic traits arise through the combined effects of sex hormones and sex chromosomes on sex-biased gene expression, and experimental mouse models have been instrumental in determining their relativ...
It is now becoming widely recognized that there are important sex differences in disease. These include rates of disease incidence, symptoms and age of onset. These differences between the sexes can be seen as...
