Sex: A change in our guidelines to authors to ensure that this is no longer an ignored variable
An article by James R. Docherty et al., published 23 August 2019 in the British Journal of Pharmacology
Communication from IMPACTT Sex & Gender Lead Dr. Jayne Danska
At a time when precision medicine is a strategic priority of many research organizations, there remain inconsistent policies and practices around the inclusion of biological sex as a variable in biomedical research. We wanted to share with the IMPACTT community a recent editorial in the British Journal of Pharmacology that provides a historical look at the reporting of sex as a variable in work they have published; advice on optimized experimental design and analysis; and outlines their new requirements for manuscripts considered for publication.
- Sex as an experimental variable is now required for all reporting
- In the absence of a design that uses both sexes, authors will be required to justify their approach
- Multifactorial designs should be used to study treatment, genotype, sex, and their interactions
- Authors must discuss implications of their study findings for males and females
–Jayne Danska for the IMPACTT Team
The IMPACTT Team welcomes hearing from collaborating teams who have questions on how best to design and analyze studies to consider sex as a variable.
