Thread by @uberbarrensclub

Part 2 of a thread about women's healthcare gaslighting & inadequate care. There are some sex-based differences between how women & men experience pain, which may be driven by differences in sex hormones, endogenous opioid function & genetic factors.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

So the fact that women may experience pain differently a physiological level because of their sex makes it even *more* disgusting that gender bias results in such inadequate medical care for women

Failure to include women in clinical trials when developing new drugs puts women's lives at risk, as women's bodies react differently to medicines

euractiv.com/section/health…

Sascha Marschang, policy coordinator at the European Public Health Alliance (EPHA) says: "Women continue to populate many clinical trials in insufficient numbers proportionate with the prevalence of certain diseases in women."

"This means that women's healthcare is compromised by a lack of sex-specific information about dosing and particular uses of drugs. "From a public health perspective, it is unacceptable that one half of the population is underrepresented in clinical trials"

The European Institute of Women’s Health (EIWH) states that "For a long time, scientists referred to women as a sub-population when in fact women make up over half of the world’s population."

"The misguided assumption that findings from research studies conducted on men applies equally to women has underserved women far too long. Women and older people of both sexes have rightly been called ‘the understudied majority’. This has to stop"

Exclusion of women from trials isn't an oversight due to gender bias. It's often an active choice to exclude the female sex precisely because our bodies respond differently to the drugs being developed to treat us
popsci.com/surprise-resea…

"Researchers are frequently excluding women from trials due to “complexities of the menstrual cycle,” the scientists say. To conduct studies without possible interactions from fluctuating hormones, many researchers forgo using women participants"

(Only in *2015* did the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) implement policy that sex be considered as a biological variable in NIH-funded preclinical research. Yes, that's right, 2015. I know, right?)
genderedinnovations.stanford.edu/policy/timelin…

The result is that medical evidence is written from a predominantly male perspective: “When the history of an ailment, including the defining of textbook cases, is largely being written by men about men, it becomes the precedent to which anyone else is held up,” Norman says.

Women are 7 times more likely than men to be misdiagnosed and discharged in the middle of having a heart attack, because women have completely different symptoms than men when having a heart attack, & understanding is based on male physiology

health.harvard.edu/blog/women-and…

This can be fatal. A study by the British Heart Foundation estimates that more than 8,200 women in England and Wales could have survived heart attacks over the course of a decade had they received the same quality care as men

edition.cnn.com/2018/11/22/hea…

Currently, a woman who suffers a heart attack has a higher risk of dying than if she were male, because women are being misdiagnosed and getting inadequate care.

bhf.org.uk/informationsup…

Women are more likely to wait longer for a health diagnosis and to be told it’s ‘all in their heads’. That can be lethal: diagnostic errors cause 40,000-80,000 deaths in the US alone.

bbc.com/future/story/2…

To diagnose a brain tumour, a Dr simply must be concerned enough to order imaging – but it takes doctors longer to do this for women than men. Women are more likely to wait 10+ months for a referral & to have seen a Dr 5+ times before getting diagnosed

thebraintumourcharity.org/about-us/our-p…

One woman says “One of the GPs I saw actually made fun of me, saying ‘what did I think my headaches were, a brain tumour?’ I had to request a referral to neurology. I went back repeated times to be given antidepressants, sleep charts, analgesia, etc. No one took me seriously.”

A 2013 study concluded that more than twice as many women as men had to make more than three visits to a GP before getting referred to a specialist for suspected bladder cancer. So did nearly twice as many with renal cancer.

bmjopen.bmj.com/content/3/6/e0…

It takes an average of 12 months for men to get diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, compared to 20 months for women. It takes an average of 4 years for men to get diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, compared to 16 years for women.

eurordis.org/IMG/pdf/voice_…

Women's health issues have been attributed to 'hysteria' for centuries (thank you Hippcrates, and your theory of wandering wombs), and for their symptoms to be dismissed as all in their heads.

huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/female-h…

In 1965, British psychiatrist Eliot Slater warned that too often a label of hysteria allowed doctors to believe they’d solved the mystery when, in fact, usually they hadn’t.

bmj.com/content/1/5447…

A follow-up of 85 patients who’d been diagnosed with ‘hysteria’ revealed that more than 60% had a neurological disease, including brain tumours and epilepsy. A dozen of them had died.

A 1986 study identified the characteristics that made patients with serious neurological disorders vulnerable to a misdiagnosis of hysteria. One was having a prior diagnosis of a psychiatric disorder. Another was being a woman.
europepmc.org/abstract/med/3…

“Women have been more often referred to psychologists or psychiatrists, whereas men are given tests to rule out actual organic conditions,” says Christin Veasley, co-founder and director at the Chronic Pain Research Alliance

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1715691…

Many women with vulvodynia struggle to get diagnosed: "The things I heard from women… that doctors told them were completely ridiculous. “Things like, you must be having marital problems. Have a glass of wine before you have sex. It’ll be better" (thread 3 to follow)

Thread part 3 here:

https://twitter.com/uberbarrensclub/status/1087008350917849090