Sex/gender disparities in health outcomes of individuals with long-term disabling conditions.
Manu Thakral, Andrea Z Lacroix, Ivan R Molton
PMID 30299140WHAT IT FOUND
Among adults with long-term disabling conditions, physical function and depressive symptoms varied by age, and women reported more severe fatigue and pain than men.
Younger women functioned better, older women worse, and women aged 45 to 54 reported more depressive symptoms.
Key findings
01Physical functioning showed an age-specific sex/gender pattern: younger women had higher function than younger men, but older women had lower function than older men.
02Women aged 45 to 54 reported more depressive symptoms than men of the same age, while other age groups did not show clinically meaningful differences.
03After adjustment for age and diagnostic group, women reported more severe fatigue and pain than men, while other secondary conditions did not show significant differences.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The gender variable was a single binary male/female item, so it did not represent the full spectrum of gender identities. The sample was more than 97% white and may not represent all U.S. adults with multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury, neuromuscular disease, or post-polio syndrome. Diagnoses were self-reported, and the study was a survey-based observational analysis, so it cannot show that sex/gender caused the differences. The higher depressive symptoms in women were limited to the 45 to 54 age group, which was 22.5% of the sample, so it was not a general age effect.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read these differences as proof that female sex causes worse health or that a particular therapy will reduce them. The study was observational, used only binary male and female categories, and included a sample that was more than 97% white.