Why are women still underrepresented in clinical research?

Today (July 3) researchers from the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Seattle published work looking at women’s participation in medical research over 25 years, from 1993 to 2018. They analyzed over 43,000 research studies in PubMed, a searchable database of biomedical science, and 13,000 clinical trials registered on clinicaltrials.gov. Overall, women made up 49% of all participants across all studies—so far, so good. But when the researchers looked at studies condition by condition, they found that women were often underrepresented. For many disease types, the proportion of female participants didn’t match the gender breakdown of real-world patients. Five conditions showed especially dramatic discrepancies: cardiovascular disease, hepatitis, HIV, chronic kidney disease, and digestive disease. Clinical research on diabetes, mental health, non sex-specific cancers, and respiratory disease had roughly equal representation. The only two categories in which women were somewha

25 years of women being underrepresented in medical research, in charts Get Quartz in your inbox Free daily briefing on global business news. Sign me up Menu Business News Airlines Automobiles Food Pharmaceuticals Politics & Government Retail & Ecommerce Space & Aerospace Earnings Menu Technology A.I. Computing Consumer Tech Space & Aerospace Earnings Menu Money & Markets Economic Indicators Markets Personal Finance Earnings Menu Lifestyle Cars & Bikes Collecting Entertainment Food & Fine Dining Health and Fitness Real Estate Travel Energy Transition 25 years of women being underrepresented in

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