Under the CSD moniker, a multidisciplinary team of doctors and researchers at Georgetown will conduct collaborative basic and clinical research, publish in scientific journals, and provide speakers to the public and other academic medical centers through its speakers bureau. The center's director is Kathryn Sandberg, PhD, professor of medicine and physiology at Georgetown University Medical Center.
"There is no question that your biological sex vastly influences your medical experience from cradle to grave," said Sandberg. "We created this center to further explore the biological root causes of these differences. Ultimately, we hope to lead other doctors to new preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic practices that will improve health and healthcare of both women and men."
At the core of sex differences, women continue to live four to five years longer than men despite apparent equity in medical advances. Sandberg notes that many previous studies have shown that women and men react differently to prescription and over-the-counter drugs, are more susceptible to certain diseases like lung cancer and multiple strains of HIV, and experience pain and disease in varied ways. The clearest example of these stark differences is in the analysis of heart attack symptoms between the sexes.
"It is conventional medical wisdom that shooting chest and arm pains are the major symptoms of an impending heart attack, yet in reality only 30% of women who have heart attacks experience these symptoms," said Sand
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Contact: Elizabeth McDonald
eem6@georgetown.edu
202-687-7707
Georgetown University Medical Center
17-Dec-2003