Scientists continue to neglect gender in medical research, endangering women’s health by focusing on males in studies that shape the treatment of disease, a report found.

The lack of attention to gender differences occurs at all stages of research, from lab to doctor’s office, according to the report released today by the Connors Center for Women'€™s Health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and the Jacobs Institute of Women'€™s Health at George Washington University in Washington. Animal and human studies typically use male subjects and, even when females are included, researchers fail to analyze and report results by sex, the authors said.

“We’ve got to do the work and change the way science is done and translated to clinical care,” Paula Johnson, executive director of the Connors Center, said in a telephone interview. “Until we do that, we are putting women’s health at risk.”

Congress passed the 1993 National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act requiring that NIH-funded biomedical research with human subjects include and analyze the effects on woman and ethnic minorities. The legislation doesn't extend beyond research funded by the NIH and doesn't apply to animal or cellular studies.