Considering Sex as a Biological Variable in Research – Your Input is Requested

September 11, 2014

We as a scientific community have made major progress toward balancing the number of men and women who volunteer as participants in biomedical research studies; in fact, women now account for roughly half of the participants in NIH-funded clinical trials. However, we haven’t seen a similar pattern in the pre-clinical research involving animals and cells. …. Thus, as announced in May, NIH intends to develop and implement policies requiring NIH applicants to consider sex as a variable in biomedical research involving animals and cells. …. today we announced a formal request for information (RFI) to get input from the research community, and others. As described in the RFI, we want to hear your thoughts on several topics – for example, whether consideration of sex as a biological variable is an issue affecting the reproducibility of research findings ….