Women With the Same Condition Are Offered Less Treatment
A systematic review published in PLOS ONE screened more than 1,100 studies on treatment differences between women and men diagnosed with the same conditions. Of the 41 studies that met the criteria for inclusion, 33 out of 38 retrospective case series found statistically significant differences in how women and men were treated.
The pattern was not confined to a single disease or specialty. It appeared across multiple fields of medicine. When researchers looked at the 29 adjusted studies that controlled for variables like disease severity, age, and other health conditions, 25 of them still showed a gap favoring men.
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What makes these findings harder to explain away is that the gap held even after researchers accounted for the factors most often used to justify different treatment approaches. That raises a specific question about what is actually driving the difference.
The review did not identify a single cause. But the authors note that because the disparity persisted after controlling for disease severity, age, and comorbidities, it cannot be fully attributed to clinical differences between patients. The researchers suggest treatment decisions may be shaped by factors unrelated to medical need, including assumptions about how women experience or report symptoms.
For patients, the research adds to a growing body of evidence that treatment gaps are not random. The authors recommend that clinical guidelines explicitly address sex-based differences in treatment protocols. The gap identified is not a fringe finding: it spans decades of published literature and multiple medical specialties.
Source: Cirillo et al., “Sex Differences in Disease and Treatment: A Systematic Review,” PLOS ONE