ArticleeLife2016
Bias in the reporting of sex and age in biomedical research on mouse models.
Article in eLife, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 66 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
66 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- A systematic review of the development and application of home cage monitoring in laboratory mice and rats.BMC biology · 2023Pooled it
- Bored at home?-A systematic review on the effect of environmental enrichment on the welfare of laboratory rats and mice.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2022Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Importance of Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses of Animal Studies: Challenges for Animal-to-Human Translation.Journal of the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science : JAALAS · 2020Pooled it
- A checklist is associated with increased quality of reporting preclinical biomedical research: A systematic review.PloS one · 2017Pooled it
- Sex-Biased Immunity: The Hidden Variable in Immuno-oncology.Clinical cancer research : an official journal of the American Association for Cancer Research · 2026Review
- Large-scale automated detection reveals pervasive sex imbalance in biomedical research.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- T-World Virtual Human Cardiomyocyte. I. Development, Validation, and Cell Arrhythmogenesis.Circulation research · 2026Article
- The problem with one-size-fits-all medicine: Biological sex and the aging immune system.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Article
- Expert consensus statement for basic research of animal exercise intervention studies in chronic disease prevention and treatment: A joint position paper of the Exercise Science branch of the Biophysical Society of China and the Metabolism and Genetics branch of the Genetics Society of China.Journal of sport and health science · 2025Article
- Toward Sex-Specific Biomaterials Innovation: A Perspective.ACS biomaterials science & engineering · 2025Review
- Development and Clinical Validation of a Cross-Sex Translator of ECG Drug Responses.JACC. Clinical electrophysiology · 2025Article
- Sex- and age-related differences in LPS-induced lung injury: establishing a mouse intensive care unit.Intensive care medicine experimental · 2025Article
- Sex bias in tumor immunity: insights from immune cells.Theranostics · 2025Review
- Effects of inter-individual variability in experimenters' sensitivity and training on behavioral assessment of animal models of vestibular disorders.Frontiers in neurology · 2025Article
- Quantitative in Vivo Molecular MRI.Advanced materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.) · 2024Review
- Enhanced CaJACC. Clinical electrophysiology · 2024Article
- LncRNA H19 knockdown promotes neuropathologic and functional recovery via the Nrf2/HO-1 axis after traumatic brain injury.CNS neuroscience & therapeutics · 2024Article
- The inclusion of the gender perspective in oncology research with Spanish participation.Heliyon · 2024Article
6 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
In animal-based biomedical research, both the sex and the age of the animals studied affect disease phenotypes by modifying their susceptibility, presentation and response to treatment. The accurate reporting of experimental methods and materials, including the sex and age of animals, is essential so that other researchers can build on the results of such studies. Here we use text mining to study 15,311 research papers in which mice were the focus of the study. We find that the percentage of papers reporting the sex and age of mice has increased over the past two decades: however, only about 50% of the papers published in 2014 reported these two variables. We also compared the quality of reporting in six preclinical research areas and found evidence for different levels of sex-bias in these areas: the strongest male-bias was observed in cardiovascular disease models and the strongest female-bias was found in infectious disease models. These results demonstrate the ability of text mining to contribute to the ongoing debate about the reproducibility of research, and confirm the need to continue efforts to improve the reporting of experimental methods and materials.
Indexed as
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.