Top journal’s special issue on women’s health casts spotlight on menopause and pain — SkimNews
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- Science published a special issue on women's health Thursday, edited by an all-female team (Yevgeniya Nusinovich, Sacha Vignieri, Joana Osório, and Sarah Ross) who named political attacks on women's rights and research funding cuts as urgent planning motives.
- The issue features a review finding women experience functional pain at about twice the rate of men, highlighting sex-specific mechanisms tied to sex hormones, immune-neural interactions, the gut microbiome, and ovarian hormones — and the deficit in research on female pain.
- Nusinovich said she considered including cardiovascular and metabolic disease reviews but found insufficient new mechanistic biological research to support coherent articles, a gap that itself illustrates how understudied women's health remains.
- A second review argues that XX and XY chromosomes significantly impact aging and disease, contending sex chromosomes should always factor into precision medicine strategies.
- Menopause receives dedicated attention, including calls for more individualized research and treatment, investigation of the ovary's postmenopausal function, and exploration of the immune system's role in pregnancy.
- Menopause justice advocate Omisade Burney-Scott said the issue lacks coverage of early menopause from gender-affirming care and overlooks how systemic oppression — including racism, transphobia, and carcerality — shapes menopause outcomes.
- Paula Schneider, CEO of the Institute Advancing Women's Health, said research findings too often fail to reach clinical practice, leaving doctors without the knowledge to apply new evidence about women's midlife health.
Why it matters: The issue catalogs how much remains unknown about women's health, particularly beyond reproductive years, but experts including Wake Forest's Tiarney Ritchwood and the Institute Advancing Women's Health's Paula Schneider warn that without dedicated research funding and public communication beyond academic journals, the gap between scientific knowledge and clinical practice will persist for women in midlife and beyond.
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