Precision medicine for both genders
While the overall health of people in the EU has improved over recent decades, the improvement in health has not been equal. This inequality in health is the result of biological and sociological differences between women and men. These differences warrant the need for different approaches to their treatment. They also require awareness in patients and health care professionals. With EU funding, the EUGENMED (European Gender Medicine Network) initiative aims to improve the health of all European citizens by improving health research and biomedicine using a target group-specific approach. Project researchers worked to develop a roadmap for including sex and gender research in medicine. For this roadmap to come to fruition, they needed to include representatives of myriad scientific and regulatory bodies in public health. The team identified cardiovascular diseases as requiring differing clinical approaches for men and women, among many other examples. The group showed that considering sex and gender differences in cardiovascular diseases will improve treatment of these diseases and elaborated policy briefs related to asthma, diabetes, lung cancer and stroke. EUGENMED also made recommendations for funding agencies and the scientific community on how sex and gender differences in frequent diseases such as diabetes or asthma can be addressed. As a result of the research group's findings, among others, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) will no longer conduct clinical trials without including women and older people. The project was developed as an open structure for collaboration between various research and industry bodies. As such, its establishment will influence European clinical research and practice for a long time to come. EUGENET has been developed as an open sustainable structure to keep follow-up research and networking alive.
Keywords
Diseases, roadmap, medical industry, health, EUGENMED, gender medicine, sex and gender differences
