A new report finds research is sorely lacking on how chronic illnesses affect women, and it urged government agencies to do more to investigate how these diseases strike women differently.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine analysis, commissioned by the Office of Research on Women’s Health and released Wednesday, noted that women are disproportionately affected by chronic illnesses, including Alzheimer’s disease, depression and osteoporosis.

“Although women on average live longer, chronic diseases may diminish women’s quality of life for years when compared with men,” the report authors wrote. “Chronic conditions in women contribute to substantial health care costs and have a significant effect on women’s productivity at work and at home.”

However, a scarcity of research on women’s health “hinders a comprehensive understanding of the impact on women” of chronic illnesses, they added. 

“Advances in our understanding of conditions like Alzheimer’s, heart disease and even chronic pain have largely been shaped by research focused on men. At best, this means we don’t fully understand how these conditions affect women — but at worst, it can mean a misdiagnosis, medical error or inappropriate treatment,” Eve Higginbotham, chair of the committee that wrote the report, said in a news release. 

“This is not the first report from the National Academies to assert that women’s health is understudied,” she noted. “It is long overdue for federal agencies to intentionally commit to a new research agenda that will finally improve our understanding of chronic conditions in women.”

Right now, women are given short shrift in medical studies, the report authors said.

“One of the biggest frustrations is how often we [saw] examples where women were not incorporated into research, where women’s experiences and symptoms were undermined or not given enough attention,” report co-author Farida Sohrabji told the Washington Post. “One of the things that comes up quite often is that [women] are aware that their health is sometimes not given appropriate consideration, and their experience of pain is minimized.”

Sohrabji added that the medical experiences of women of color in particular have long been overlooked, even though their experiences can differ drastically from white women.

What can be done? The 500-page report calls for focused efforts, led by National Institutes of Health, to enhance diagnostic tools for female-specific conditions such as endometriosis and to distinguish among the overlapping symptoms of various chronic conditions.

Beyond that, the report authors urged the medical community to develop diagnostic tools tailored for chronic conditions in women, noting distinct gender differences in the symptoms of both heart disease and diabetes. 

“If there were something that affected a large percentage of men as [some of the diseases that affect] women, we would know exactly what causes it, and then we would have more treatments and diagnostics,” Karen Tang, a gynecologist who was not involved in the report, told the Post.

More information

The Society for Women’s Health Research has more on women’s health issues.

SOURCE: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, report, July 10, 2024; Washington Post

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