[GENDER AND SEX ASPECTS IN PHARMACOLOGY]

Abstract

Sex- and Gender-Conscious Medicine aims to raise awareness among the general public and among professionals to the phenomenon that the function of all body systems in women and men can be different. The differences may be small but significant for the health and disease and also affect pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. Since medications are still studied mostly in men and the results are applied to women, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of men have actually become the "gold standard", which is applied in practice to both sexes. This is the case, despite the fact that the body weight of women is usually lower than that of men and the compartmental distribution of fat, muscle and water is different between the sexes. In addition, metabolism and clearance of drugs through the kidneys can differ between them. As a result, women sometimes find themselves undertreated or over-treated with regard to various medications and suffer twice as much from adverse drug reactions than men. Even the involvement of regulatory institutions such as the FDA in the USA was not enough to change the situation decisively. In this review, I will discuss various aspects of the problem, present examples of different groups of drugs and will especially refer to the problem of the side effects of medications in women.