Research Article: Does Biological Sex Matter in Lyme Disease? The Need for Sex-Disaggregated Data in Persistent Illness
Abstract:
An implicit and inaccurate assumption underlying most medical research is that aside from reproductive matters, men and women do not differ substantially in their physiological and pathological response to disease. Most research was primarily conducted on men until when the National Institutes of Health (NIH) began requiring that sex be included as a biological variable factored into research designs and reported in both animal and human studies. Consideration of sex is now seen as critical to the interpretation, validation, and generalizability of research findings. However, in the case of Lyme disease, only a handful of papers have meaningfully analyzed differences linked to sex.
Introduction:
An implicit and inaccurate assumption underlying most medical research is that aside from reproductive matters, men and women do not differ substantially in their physiological and pathological response to disease. Most research was primarily conducted on men until when the National Institutes of Health (NIH) began requiring that sex be included as a biological variable factored into research designs and reported in both animal and human studies. Consideration of sex is now seen as critical to the interpretation,…
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