Women get a diagnosis years later than men

Medicine is male, for centuries. Anatomical research, the dosage of medication or disease, typical symptoms are: scale of the male body. For women the deadly consequences it can have.

A myocardial infarction is indicated in case of women for example often completely different than in men. The suspect pain in the left upper arm you don’t feel often, instead, women complain of abdominal or back pain, Nausea, or shortness of breath. You get the diagnosis, therefore, often much later, sometimes too late. Statistically, patients die more often from a heart attack.

“Men actually have the tendency later to see a doctor”

Later diagnoses in women does not appear to cover illnesses, only cardiovascular. Danish researchers have evaluated the health data of 6.9 million Danes, the information about hundreds of diseases. The result: women with the same disease on average four years older than men when they get the diagnosis. Were studied, only data from hospitals. On more harmless diseases that do not need to be treated in a health clinic, says the study, therefore, nothing.

In the case of cardiovascular diseases, the range at 4.5 years of age, with cancer at 2.5 years, the researchers report in the journal “Nature Communication”. “This has surprised us,” says the study’s lead author, Søren Brunak of the University of Copenhagen. “Men actually have the tendency later to see a doctor.”

The study, however, says nothing about the causes for the difference in time. That does not give her the data. The researchers suggest that a combination of genetics, environmental conditions and prejudices in the health system could be responsible for it. A majority of the temporary differences can be probably explained by the fact that diseases in women occur on average later than men.

The Exception Of Osteoporosis

According to the researchers, all the differences are not, however, explain. Especially the data on osteoporosis suggest that gender is determined when a disease is diagnosed. In the case of the skeletal disease in which bones become porous. In Germany, around six million people, mostly women, suffer. Osteoporosis is considered a woman’s disease.

This was also evident in the data from Denmark. Because, unlike most diseases, osteoporosis was found in women much earlier. The men involved were given the diagnosis, however, usually only when they had already suffered a bone fracture.

The Doctor Marcia Stefanick, from Stanford University, is not surprised: “When men get diseases, which are considered in the health system as women’s diseases, they get the diagnosis is usually later and in a more serious stage,” says the researcher, who was not involved in the study. The same is true for the opposite case, when women suffer from supposed “men’s diseases”. This Problem will be taken into consideration in medical training so far to little.