Journal article
A Gender Hypothesis of sex disparities in adverse drug events
Social science & medicine (1982), Vol.339, pp.116385-116385
01 Dec 2023
PMID: 37952268
Featured in Collection : UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
Abstract
Pharmacovigilance databases contain larger numbers of adverse drug events (ADEs) that occurred in women compared to men. The cause of this disparity is frequently attributed to sex-linked biological factors. We offer an alternative Gender Hypothesis, positing that gendered social factors are central to the production of aggregate sex disparities in ADE reports. We describe four pathways through which gender may influence observed sex disparities in pharmacovigilance databases: healthcare utilization; bias and discrimination in the clinic; experience of a drug event as adverse; and pre-existing social and structural determinants of health. We then use data from the U.S. FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) to explore how the Gender Hypothesis might generate novel predictions and explanations of sex disparities in ADEs in existing widely referenced datasets. Analyzing more than 3 million records of ADEs between 2014 and 2022, we find that patient-reported ADEs show a larger female skew than healthcare provider-reported ADEs and that the sex disparity is markedly smaller for outcomes involving death or hospitalization. We also find that the sex disparity varies greatly across types of ADEs, for example, cosmetically salient ADEs are skewed heavily female and sexual dysfunction ADEs are skewed male. Together, we interpret these findings as providing evidence of the promise of the Gender Hypothesis for identifying intervenable mechanisms and pathways contributing to sex disparities in ADEs. Rigorous application of the Gender Hypothesis to additional datasets and in future research studies could yield new insights into the causes of sex disparities in ADEs.
Metrics
3 Record Views
Details
- Title
- A Gender Hypothesis of sex disparities in adverse drug events
- Creators
- Katharine M. N. Lee - Tulane UniversityTamara Rushovich - Harvard UniversityAnnika Gompers - Emory UniversityMarion Boulicault - Massachusetts Institute of TechnologySteven Worthington - Quantitative BioSciencesJeffrey W. Lockhart - University of ChicagoSarah S. Richardson - Harvard University
- Publication Details
- Social science & medicine (1982), Vol.339, pp.116385-116385
- Publisher
- Elsevier
- Number of pages
- 10
- Grant note
- James S. McDonnell Foundation 79892 / Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF)
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Urban Health Collaborative
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:001113675800001
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-85176228653
- Other Identifier
- 991022051413704721
UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
This output has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:
InCites Highlights
These are selected metrics from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool, related to this output
- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- International collaboration
- Web of Science research areas
- Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
- Social Sciences, Biomedical