Lab rats are overwhelmingly male, and that’s a problem

CNN — The data didn’t make sense. “I was shocked when we saw the cells themselves were different based on sex.” Concern has been growing in recent years that ignoring or downplaying differences in sex as a biological variable – whether in cells under a microscope or in lab animals – is undermining biomedical research at the earliest stages. And incompletedata and erroneous conclusions in preclinical research, ultimately, can have an impact on the health of all of us, the health of women and men,” said Chyren Hunter, associate director for basic and translational research at the National Institutes of Health Office of Research on Women’s Health, which is holding a conference on sex as a biological variable this week. Shansky wrote in Nature Neuroscience in March that considering sex as a biological variable “will require a global shift in science culture.” Many journals ask authors to adhere to SAGER guidelines on sex and gender equity in research, but that doesn’t mean that researchers have to comply with them. “Men and women can take different paths, and they may cross and intersect, to reach the same destination – or in this case, in disease – but that doesn’t mean that they started off in a same way, or that every single step that they took to reach that destination was identical.” Challenges For Clyne at the University of Maryland, the realization that the cells she worked on differed by sex has completely reshaped how she and her lab work.