Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association has made it a mission to focus on research involving women’s differences.
For example, here are some points that have been discovered:
Heart attacks in women frequently don’t involve chest pain and may involve more vague, flu-like symptoms.
Women who don’t smoke appear to be more susceptible to lung cancer than nonsmoking men. Women also tend to get lung cancer at younger ages than men, and they appear to metabolize cancer-causing substances differently than men.
Women are less likely than men to get oral cancer.
Women are more prone to autoimmune diseases, including lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis, in which disease-fighting mechanisms mistakenly attack the body’s own tissues.
Some AIDS-fighting medicines appear to metabolize more quickly in men than in women, who may require gender-specific doses.
Women’s symptoms for ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease – debilitating intestinal diseases that affect men and women – vary considerably each month, requiring frequent medication adjustments.
Women’s health study that is limited in focus to breast and reproductive health is call “bikini medicine.”