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EVERYTHING
Female Physicians Face Much Higher Suicide Risk
What: A CDC and UC San Diego study found that female physicians have a 53% higher suicide risk compared to women in the overall population.
Key line: “’Our study helps confirm the fact that physicians are at high risk for suicide, and it tells us that we need to be even more vigilant about this when it comes to female physicians,’ said first author Hirsh Makhija, M.S., a postgraduate volunteer researcher in the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine. ‘Existing suicide prevention programs may not be enough.’”
Source: UC San Diego
Double X Chromosomes…Lead to Longer Lives?
What: The New York Times looks at why women live longer than men (even though many of those years might be lived with a lower quality of life.) One theory? It’s from a mouse study, but researchers found that having two X chromosomes meant mice lived longer—regardless of whether they had testicles or ovaries.
Key line: “’There was something about the second X chromosome that was protecting the mice from dying earlier in life, even if they had testes,’ Dr. Dubal said. ‘What if there was something on that second X chromosome that was in some ways a sprinkle of the fountain of youth?’”
Source: New York Times
FERTILITY
South Korea’s Fertility Rate Increases
What: South Korea’s fertility rate increased for the first time in nearly a decade—notable because the country is often noted as a case study for panic around women not having children. What made the rate go up? One possibility is the marriage rate increasing nearly 15% in 2024.
Key line: “The marriage rate jumped 14.9% in 2024 — the biggest increase since 1970 — Reuters reported, amid government measures to encourage young couples to get married and have children. More than 65% of single Koreans now say they want to get married, The Korea Times reported last October, though only just over half believe marriage is essential, according to a separate poll. ‘There was a change in social value, with more positive views about marriage and childbirth,’ a Statistics Korea official said during a briefing Wednesday.”
Source: Semafor
ENDOMETRIOSIS
When Endometriosis Causes Mental Illness…and It Goes Ignored
What: A deep dive into endometriosis and how years-long delays in diagnoses can end up causing mental illness, like depression and anxiety.
Key line: “[Hugh Taylor, chair of OBGYN sciences at Yale,] explains, “The endometriosis from the pelvis and elsewhere sends inflammatory signals and small molecules to the brain. These signals and molecules change brain gene expression and electrophysiology.” He demonstrates that these changes lead to behavioral symptoms such as depression and anxiety. Taylor and his colleagues discovered these connections by inducing endometriosis in female mice. “The impact of endometriosis on the brain is incredibly common, but underrecognized and underappreciated,” Taylor emphasizes.
Source: Think Global Health
CARDIOVASCULAR
Study: Women with Hearts that Work More Like Men’s Are at Greater Risk
What: A study that looked at the results of over 1 million EKGs found that AI could predict biological sex via specific features, like how long it takes electrical impulses to travel though the heart, or heart rate. And when the AI happened to be wrong, predicting a male heart instead of a female heart—those women had a significantly increased risk of cardiovascular problems like heart failure or heart attack.
Key line: “Through advanced phenome- and genome-wide analyses, researchers found that women with higher sex discordance scores tended to display traits traditionally associated with male cardiovascular phenotypes, including larger heart size and reduced fat mass. Genetic analyses suggested that sex discordance scores might be influenced by genetic variants linked to heart structure and hormonal pathways, further cementing the biomarker’s physiological and genetic underpinnings.”
Source: Inside Precision Medicine
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