Gender bias in the sciences isn’t a one-way street. When reading the previous sentence, did you imagine the street’s traffic flowed heavier in a particular direction? The peer-reviewed Stanford University project Gendered Innovations in Science, Health & Medicine and Engineering may paint a more complex and accurate picture, using sex and gender analysis as a resource to improve research and facilitate innovation. For example, as noted in a Stanford Report article, the program conducted a case study on osteoperosis in men, who often suffer from the disease later and less frequently than women but may experience more difficulty recovering from related fractures. Fortifying sex-specific research in this instance could lead to better patient care and a more nuanced understanding of the disease.

Gendered Innovations founder and director Londa Schiebinger, PhD, has collaborated with an international team to develop 11 methods for integrating tools for sex and gender analysis into science and engineering research projects. Since beginning in 2009 from start-up funding from the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research, which Schiebinger directed from 2004-2010, Gendered Innovations also has completed 14 case studies demonstrating the benefits of using those methods.

Kathleen Sullivan writes in the Stanford Report:

The Gendered Innovations project was developed through six international workshops. In 2011, the European Union joined the project, followed by the U.S. National Science Foundation in 2012.

“The project was created through a unique international collaboration of scientists, engineers and gender experts,” Schiebinger said.

The first workshop was held at Stanford in 2011 and the seventh – and last – will be held in September in Brussels, at the headquarters of the European Commission.

Methods of sex and gender analysis in research include Rethinking Research Priorities and Outcomes, which asks scientists to consider how gender norms influence priorities, who will be the research’s beneficiaries and who will be left out, and whether new data is required to make funding-allocation decisions. Rethinking Language and Visual Representations, another of the project’s analysis tools, seeks to remove assumptions that may limit or restrict innovation and knowledge as well as those that subconsciously reinforce gender inequalities. The article continues:

“Researchers will want to consider all methods and think creatively about how these methods can enhance their own research,”  [Schiebinger] said. “Our message is that researchers need to design sex and gender analysis into their project from the very beginning.”

She said research has shown that sex and gender bias can be harmful and expensive.

“Between 1997 and 2000, 10 drugs were withdrawn from the U.S. market because of life-threatening health effects, and eight of them had more severe side effects in women,” she said. “Developing those drugs cost billions of dollars and inestimable human suffering and death. So we have a very strong reason to be looking at sex and gender differences in medicine.”

Schiebinger said the same is true for technology.

Previously:  Study shows many heart devices receive FDA approval without adequate testing on women and NIH awards aim to increase diversity in the sciences

In sports, tearing the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is a serious injury that can leave athletes sidelined for six months or longer. As it turns out, men may be more prone to tearing their ACL than women, according to a new report published in The American Journal of Sports Medicine. A recent Reuters story examines the findings by Swedish researchers:

Overall, 56,659 people in Sweden tore a knee ligament during the study period. The researchers say that works out to an average of 78 tears for every 100,000 Swedish citizens.

Men accounted for about 34,000 of those tears, or 60 percent. Men also had 59 percent of the reconstructive surgeries associated with knee ligament injuries.

Swedish women tended to experience ACL injuries at a younger age (between ages 11 and 20, versus 21-30 for men).

When Nordenvall and his colleagues looked just at the age groups with the highest injury rates, men still had far more knee troubles. The numbers worked out to about 144 tears per 100,000 women between 11 and 20 years old, and 225 tears per 100,000 men aged 21-30.

Interestingly enough, this report contradicts an earlier study that found that women, not men, are more susceptible to tearing their ACL. Richard Nordenvall, MD, lead researcher of the new study, responds:

I think the difference is that earlier studies studied at-risk populations. In those studies, women are more prone to get injured. The difference with this study is that we studied the general population.

Previously: Contact sports OK for kids with one kidney, new study says and Researchers call for improvements to health screenings for female college athletes

Many men are astonished to learn that heart health and sexual function are closely related. And Stanford’s Michael Eisenberg, MD, wants men to know that erectile dysfunction is often a precursor to other medical problems – particularly heart disease.

Just in time for National Men’s Health Week, this video provides some important information about what erectile dysfunction really means. Eisenberg also offers more details in this Q&A. This may be the perfect opportunity to spread awareness for a topic often too awkward for public discourse – without bruising anyone’s ego.

A better awareness of ethnic and sexual preference-related factors is needed to improve quality of life for gay men and minorities treated for prostate cancer, according to a review published in an upcoming Nature Reviews Urology.

Researchers from the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia analyzed several studies that showed differences in treatment outcomes, sexual function and coping among subpopulations including African Americans, Latin Americans, Asians and men who have sex with men (MSM). According to a release, findings showed:

• African Americans are less likely to initiate and complete treatment and less likely to trust a physician.
• Latin American men who underwent radiation therapy or a radical prostatectomy demonstrated greater levels of severe sleep dysfunction.
• Gay men are often diagnosed with prostate cancer later in life and may be reluctant to reveal their sexual preference.

Co-author Edouard J. Trabulsi, MD, commented in the release on the significance of the findings in improving the quality of life in gay men and minorities treated for prostate cancer.

Different communities of men view the effects of prostate cancer treatments very differently … It’s in the patient’s best interest for caregivers to acknowledge perceptions and expectations during the treatment decision process. They should take specific demographics, socioeconomic status, and sexual preference into consideration, and tailor an approach based on a patient’s specific concerns about the implications of various treatments.

Researchers noted that one reason for poorer quality of life among these subpopulations may also be attributed to a lack of social support group. For example, gay men typically don’t have long-term partners and may not have the same level of support at home. As a result they seek out support from other sources, but with the limited number of support groups specifically tailored for MSM with prostate cancer is limited this community may rely on Internet-based groups and could have an increased risk of becoming socially isolated.

Previously: New study advocates exercise to improve prostate cancer outcomes

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The number of male eating disorder cases is on the rise. This NBC Nightly News segment takes a closer look at increasing prevalence of anorexia among boys and how the disorder differs between genders. In the video, James Lock, MD, PhD, a psychiatrist at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, explains why anorexia is generally more advanced among boys by the time they seek treatment.

Previously: Shedding light on how binge eating affects men, What a teenager wishers her parents knew about eating disorders, Stanford’s eating disorder program owes its success to holistic treatment and KQED health program examines causes and effects of disordered eating

Gilbert Khalil’s exemplary fitness did not protect him against prostate cancer – after age 60, the risk rises for every man. Khalil, a project manager from Danville, took a very orderly approach to decide how to proceed after his diagnosis. He had watched his mother and brother endure the side effects of their cancer treatments, so he and his wife Stacee read everything they could. “They all had consequences,” he told me. “We decided we wanted to get a second or even a third opinion.” The couple ended up at Stanford, talking with Mark Gonzalgo, MD, PhD, director of robotic-assisted urologic cancer surgery. This video tells their story.

Do men who binge eat experience less distress or impairment than women who do? According to a new study published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders, the answer is “no.”

In a workplace survey of more than 46,00o adults, Ruth Striegel, PhD, of Wesleyan University found that 7.5 percent of men (compared to 11.2 percent of women) experienced one or more binge-eating episodes during the previous month and that the negative effects associated with binge eating – including depression, distress and obesity – were experienced by males as well as females.  They also showed that binge eating hurt work productivity. “Our data suggest that binge eating in men is associated with significant functional impairment,” the researchers wrote.

Striegel and her colleagues also noted that few binge-eating studies have included men – and that men are especially underrepresented in treatment studies. They concluded that:

The underrepresentation of men in treatment-seeking samples does not appear to reflect lower levels of impairment in men versus women. Efforts are needed to raise awareness of the clinical significance of binge eating in men so that this group can receive appropriate screening and treatment services.

Researchers at Stanford are currently studying two types of therapies for binge eating disorder (.pdf) and are looking for both men and women to participate. More on the trial can be found here.

Previously: What a teenager wishers her parents knew about eating disorders, Stanford’s eating disorder program owes its success to holistic treatment and KQED health program examines causes and effects of disordered eating
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Married or formerly married men who have had no children are at a higher risk of cardiovascular-related death than those who have become fathers. Why this is true, it’s too early to say. But Stanford urologist Michael Eisenberg, MD, wonders whether this may be because of a higher prevalence, among the childless men, of fertility problems that ultimately could be tied to some of the same factors responsible for heart disease.

In a 10-year study of some 135,000 men, all of them over 50 years old and basically healthy when the study began, Eisenberg and his colleagues observed a 17 percent increase in cardiovascular-related (heart-disease and stroke) deaths among men with no children, compared with those who’d had two or more.

To make sure that the men they were looking at had both the intent and the opportunity to reproduce, Eisenberg and his colleagues, whose work appears in the journal Human Reproduction, restricted their sample population to those who were married or had once been married. They reasoned that the absence of children among currently or formerly married  men might suggest a reduced ability to conceive.

And indeed, in another recent, much smaller study that was widely reported – no doubt because of its provocative main conclusion that men’s testosterone levels sink upon becoming fathers - one finding was that men with higher testosterone levels seem to have better luck finding mates and producing offspring.

I lean toward another theory, myself: Having kids is just plain good for you. It’s not so much that the drop in a man’s testosterone count after having kids (especially among highly nurturing dads, as that smaller study found)  is good for the heart (which, according to the medical literature,  it may or may not be). It’s that the cumulative blessings accruing from taking care of kids overwhelms the acute brain damage arising from those early sleepless nights and, shall we say, “arms-length transactions” of early parenthood.

Photo by Michelle Brandt

People’s focus during a pregnancy is, quite understandably, on the baby and expectant mom – but that doesn’t mean we should forget about the needs of the dad. That’s the message from University of Missouri researcher ManSoo Yu, PhD, who led a small study examining the emotions of men and women during pregnancy and who contends that leaving men out of prenatal care could be harmful to their family. Healthland reports today:

When confronted with pregnancy-related issues – things like bodily changes and wondering how life will change post-baby — Yu found that men respond in much the same way they do when dealing with financial stressors, while women view them as emotional stressors. “Men are thinking about how they are going to support their new family,” says Yu. “They are trying to understand the role of the father and consider how they will parent.”

While expectant mothers concentrate on the prenatal period, men tend to focus on the future, fretting about how they’re going to afford diapers and child care. It’s an important distinction and one that should be pointed out to doctors, nurses, midwives and social workers who take care of pregnant women, says Yu.

Whether or how the psychological well-being of men is associated with better pregnancy outcomes isn’t clear, but Yu intends to investigate the association, suggesting that to start men should be more involved in prenatal doctor visits. Practitioners should engage them in caring for their partner during pregnancy and help men prepare for life after baby; men can be offered resources that educate about substance abuse, for example, and help them manage stress and boost their communication skills.

Yu’s study appeared in the Journal of Advanced Nursing earlier this spring.

Photo by Spigoo

Many of the more than 2.2 million men struck with prostate cancer in the U.S. may perk up – and get up to move around – when they hear the results of a study published today in the journal Cancer Research.

The researchers, led by UC-San Francisco’s Erin Richman, Sc.D., followed men for at least 15 months after a prostate cancer diagnosis, tracking each man’s exercise habits and monitoring whether their cancer worsened. The men who engaged in at least 3 hours of vigorous physical activity per week had a 57 percent slower rate of cancer progression to more worrying states than those who exercised less.

Urologist and prostate cancer researcher Joseph Presti, Jr., MD, said he was excited to see that the study had revealed an association between physical activity and better clinical outcomes. He said the findings seemed sound and should inspire further research on the benefits of exercise for men with prostate cancer. But Presti warned that until until such additional studies confirm the current findings, he will be left with some lingering questions about whether exercise is the best explanation of the lower levels of cancer progression.

Presti already urges his Stanford Cancer Center patients to exercise, but primarily to improve their cardiovascular health, a fairly common additional threat to their well-being.

“If the exercise happens to improve their cancer outcomes as well, even better,” he said.

Photo by Dominic Alves