Sex in Context: Limitations of Animal Studies for Addressing Human Sex/Gender Neurobehavioral Health Disparities
Sex in Context: Limitations of Animal Studies for Addressing Human Sex/Gender Neurobehavioral Health Disparities
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DOI：
10.1523/jneurosci.1391-16.2016
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发表时间：
2016-11-23
影响因子：
5.3
通讯作者：
Richardson, Sarah S.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Eliot, Lise;Richardson, Sarah S.
许多大脑和行为障碍对男性和女性的影响不同。美国国立卫生研究院要求在临床前研究中包括雄性和雌性动物的新要求旨在解决这种健康差异，但我们认为，这项任务并不是解决这一问题的最佳解决方案。性别差异是高度物种特异性的，与特定物种甚至动物品系的交配系统和社会生态有关。在许多情况下，动物很难复制大脑相关的人类疾病中的男女差异。人类健康中的性/性别差异有很强的社会文化成分，与生物性别密切相关，在动物中建模具有挑战性。我们支持在假设驱动的动物大脑和行为研究中调查性别相关变量的研究。然而，要求进行性别分析并使性别分析比其他生物差异来源更为突出的体制政策可能会扭曲研究。我们警告说，几乎所有动物研究都要进行昂贵的性别分析，这巩固了人类大脑和行为差异主要是生物学起源的假设，忽视了潜在的更强大的社会，心理和文化因素对男女神经行为健康差距的贡献。
Many brain and behavioral disorders differentially affect men and women. The new National Institutes of Health requirement to include both male and female animals in preclinical studies aims to address such health disparities, but we argue that the mandate is not the best solution to this problem. Sex differences are highly species-specific, tied to the mating system and social ecology of a given species or even strain of animal. Inmanycases, animals poorly replicate male-female differences in brain-relatedhumandiseases. Sex/gender disparities in human health have a strong sociocultural component that is intimately entangled with biological sex and challenging to model in animals. We support research that investigates sex-related variables in hypothesis-driven studies of animal brains and behavior. However, institutional policies that require sex analysis and give it special salience over other sources of biological variance can distort research. We caution that the costly imposition of sex analysis on nearly all animal research entrenches the presumption that human brain and behavioral differences are largely biological in origin and overlooks the potentially more powerful social, psychological, and cultural contributors to male-female neurobehavioral health gaps.