Ialways the hormones? For fear of misleading influences from hormonal fluctuations, studies in the past were often carried out on male subjects – both in animals and in humans, in basic and clinical research. As a result, the peculiarities of female bodies are sometimes not taken into account, which can be detrimental to women’s health.
However, more research on female animals and test subjects could have another effect: As researchers from Harvard Medical School and Northeastern University in Boston now report in “Current Biology”, experiments on these probably bring more stable results. They used mice to study how the animals explore open terrain. They also recorded the hormone cycle in females, which is associated with changes in social and sexual behavior. Therefore, the team assumed that the inclusion of females would complicate the experiments. However, according to the study, the influence of hormones in the experiment is negligible: differences in behavior were much larger between individuals than between the sexes, and among males even more than among females.
While human clinical research is expected to include more women than it used to, in part due to changing guidelines, neurobiological experiments may need more reforms — both because of sexism and conservatism, says study author Sandeep Robert Datta. Experiments on exploratory behavior should examine either both sexes or only females.
Researchers should also keep this in mind in many other settings. And question existing beliefs about supposed differences between the sexes.