Integrating sex and gender into neurodegeneration research: A six-component strategy

LAY SUMMARY

Despite significant differences between men and women in diseases that affect the brain, there is surprisingly little research undertaken in this area. The Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA) – as a network of 350+ leading experts working together on prevention, treatment, and quality of life research projects – provides an ideal setting to study these differences. The Women, Gender, Sex, and Dementia cross-cutting program within the CCNA has developed and implemented a six-component strategy to foster the study of sex differences throughout the network. This strategy included involvement at the executive level, training for researchers and students, research collaboration, review of progress reports, results dissemination, and ongoing manuscript review. Specifically, we reviewed the effects of the strategy over two progress reporting periods in 2016. We found that research productivity in examining sex differences increased substantially for both animal (36% to 45%) and human (56% to 60%) studies. We also examined barriers to greater inclusion, and are working on these to ensure the ongoing study of sex and gender differences. This best practice model could be utilized by a wide variety of large national and international groups to facilitate the study of sex differences.