Gendered innovations in biomedicine and public health research

Abstract

Innovations surrounding sex and gender have transformed many aspects of biomedical and public health research in the past three decades. Cardiology offers one of the best developed examples of gendered innovations: Sex and gender analyses have shown, for example, that cardiovascular disease (CVD), long defined as primarily a male disease, is the number one killer of adult women. Analyzing sex differences in CVD has led researchers to understand that heart attack symptoms differ by sex,1 that diagnostic tests, such as the exercise treadmill, differ in efficacy between men and women,2 and that aspirin is not a good primary preventive measure against heart attack in women.3