ArticleBiology of sex differences2017
Inclusion of sex and gender in biomedical research: survey of clinical research proposed at the University of Pennsylvania.
Article in Biology of sex differences, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers, 1 of them a synthesis 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
20 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 30 citations in OpenAlex.
- Strategies to Augment the Cardiovascular System and Acutely Enhance Exercise Performance in Individuals with Spinal Cord Injury: A Systematic Scoping Review.Sports medicine - open · 2025Pooled it
- Sex-related differences in markers of immune activation in virologically suppressed HIV-infected patients.Biology of sex differences · 2020Trial
- Artificial intelligence in cancer diagnosis and therapy using sex and gender as precision biomarkers.Discover oncology · 2026Review
- Sex and gender differences in cancer pathogenesis and pharmacology.Clinical & translational oncology : official publication of the Federation of Spanish Oncology Societies and of the National Cancer Institute of Mexico · 2025Review
- Advanced Multiscale Attention Network for Estrous Cycle Stage Identification from Rat Vaginal Cytology.Biology · 2025Article
- Developing the evidence-base to inform policy on inclusive research design.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Mapping the evidence on the impact of heat stress on exercise and work performance in females: a scoping review.Frontiers in physiology · 2025Review
- Gender Differences in the Impact of a High-Fat, High-Sugar Diet in Skeletal Muscles of Young Female and Male Mice.Nutrients · 2024Article
- Cancer researchers' perceptions of the importance of the sex of cell lines, animals, and human samples for cancer biology research.iScience · 2023Article
- Considerations of sex and gender dimensions by research ethics committees: a scoping review.International health · 2022Article
- An integrated entropy-spatial framework for automatic gender recognition enhancement of emotion-based EEGs.Medical & biological engineering & computing · 2022Article
- Integrative Studies of Human Cord Blood Derived Mononuclear Cells and Umbilical Cord Derived Mesenchyme Stem Cells in Ameliorating Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2021Article
- Complexity and Entropy Analysis to Improve Gender Identification from Emotional-Based EEGs.Journal of healthcare engineering · 2021Article
- Filling the Regulatory Gap: Potential Role of Institutional Review Boards in Promoting Consideration of Sex as a Biological Variable.Journal of women's health (2002) · 2020Article
- Sex bias and omission in neuroscience research is influenced by research model and journal, but not reported NIH funding.Frontiers in neuroendocrinology · 2020Review
- Novel Mechanisms of Cancer Emerge When Accounting for Sex as a Biological Variable.Cancer research · 2020Article
- Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease as a Canonical Example of Metabolic Inflammatory-Based Liver Disease Showing a Sex-Specific Prevalence: Relevance of Estrogen Signaling.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2020Review
- A hybrid model for EEG-based gender recognition.Cognitive neurodynamics · 2019Article
- Association of Author Gender With Sex Bias in Surgical Research.JAMA surgery · 2018Article
- Sex and Gender Dimensions in Hazard and Risk Assessment of Engineered Nanomaterials.Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Nanomedicine and nanobiotechnologyReview
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundThe 2015 National Institutes of Health (NIH) policy that sex be considered as a biological variable (SABV) is now a critical part of the peer-review process for NIH funding as well as publication in several high-impact scientific journals. We sought to determine the degree to which biomedical researchers at the University of Pennsylvania already consider SABV or gender in their research.
methodsWe reviewed 240 research protocols approved by the University of Pennsylvania Investigational Review Board (IRB) consecutively submitted between January and July 2016. Each protocol was searched for the terms sex, gender, male, female, man, and woman and justifications related to the population under study. A PubMed search was conducted to determine the current state of knowledge regarding potential sex and/or gender differences with respect to protocol topic. Data were summarized using descriptive statistics.
resultsOf the 165 (68.8%) protocols that included one of the search terms, only 24 (14.5%) provided justification for the choice of the sex/gender of the population studied. Sixty-three percent (
conclusionsReview of a subset of IRB protocols submitted at a major research institution suggests that very few investigators are considering sex or gender as important variables in their clinical research at the stage of protocol development. IRBs are in an excellent position to encourage investigators to consider SABV and gender in order to enhance the rigor of research design, maximize the importance of the resulting knowledge, and ensure that subject selection is equitable. These findings serve as the basis for developing an intervention at the level of IRB protocol development and submission that will promote consideration of SABV and/or gender, factors with critical import to patient safety and efficacy of interventions.
Indexed as
Identifiers
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.