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. 2022 Jun 7;8(1):74.
doi: 10.1186/s40798-022-00455-6.

Women Have Tendons… and Tendinopathy: Gender Bias is a "Gender Void" in Sports Medicine with a Lack of Women Data on Patellar Tendinopathy-A Systematic Review

Camilla Mondini Trissino da Lodi  1 , Maria Paola Landini  2 , Emanuela Asunis  3 , Giuseppe Filardo  1   4   5
Affiliations

Women Have Tendons… and Tendinopathy: Gender Bias is a "Gender Void" in Sports Medicine with a Lack of Women Data on Patellar Tendinopathy-A Systematic Review

Camilla Mondini Trissino da Lodi et al. Sports Med Open. .

Abstract

Introduction: Patellar tendinopathy is one of the most common musculoskeletal problems associated with sport. While commonly perceived as a predominantly male problem, recent epidemiological studies revealed that it also affects a large number of sport-active women. The aim of this systematic review was to understand how the available treatments apply to women affected by patellar tendinopathy.

Methods: We analysed the available literature with a systematic review on three databases (PubMed, Cochrane, Web of Science) on February 2021, retrieving a total of 136 studies published from 1983.

Results: The overall scientific field offers an astonishingly low number of data on treatment results referring to only 78 women (2%) in the entire literature. Only 5% of the retrieved articles considered focusing only or mostly on men to be a limitation.

Conclusions: Women represent only a minority of patients studied for this topic. The few documented cases are further fragmented by being related to different treatments, thus basically offering no solid evidence for results and limitations of any therapeutic approach in women. This literature analysis showed a greater gender gap than what is recognized in science and general medicine; it showed a gender blindness in sports medicine when investigating a common problem like patellar tendinopathy.

Keywords: Gender bias; Patellar tendinopathy; Sports medicine; Tendinopathy.

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Conflict of interest statement

Camilla Mondini Trissino da Lodi, Maria Paola Landini, Emanuela Asunis and Giuseppe Filardo declare that they have no competing interests relevant to the content of this article.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Item for Systematic Meta-Analyses) flow chart of the article selection process
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Percentage of women and men enrolled in patellar tendinopathy related research retrieved in this systematic review, and corresponding number of articles published from 1980 to 2020
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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