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I recently attended the launch of The Lancet’s Women’s Issue, dedicated to advancing gender equity in science, medicine, and global health.  Keynote speaker, Feminist writer, and campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez proclaimed that ‘there is no field in which it is more urgent to address gender equity than in medicine’.

In her opening speech, as in her new book Invisible Women, she described the many challenges that women face in a world that is designed around a male default. For example, crash test dummies are designed with male bodies in mind, so although men are more likely to be in road traffic accidents, women are more likely to be seriously hurt.

Furthermore, she highlighted the tendency in the medical profession to train students on the “average” male body—as if female bodies were just a smaller version of the male. As a result of such assumptions in medicine and the ‘gender data gap’ we just don’t have enough data about women for women. This leads to worrying statistics such as, following a heart attack women are 50 percent more likely to be misdiagnosed than men.

Caroline asserted: “Women are dying because of the gender data gap in medicine – in medical research, in medical education, in medical practice and it needs to be closed as a matter of absolute urgency”.

Inspired by Caroline’s Keynote speech and in celebration of International Women’s Day last month, we have chosen to highlight papers recommended on F1000Prime which focus on women’s health or gender. At F1000, we want to do what we can to highlight the importance of research focused on women’s health.

If you like our recommendations, why not consider checking out F1000Prime? F1000Prime is our literature recommendation service, which has a peer-nominated global Faculty of more than 8,000 of the world’s leading biomedical scientists and clinicians. The Faculty select those articles which they think are particularly interesting and important and write recommendations explaining their selection. From the numerical ratings awarded, we have created a unique system for quantifying the importance of individual articles.

“This is an extremely interesting article, which is accompanied by an even more interesting editorial” – Jack Sobel, Harper Hospital, Detroit, USA

“Cai and colleagues analysed women with previous recurrent urinary tract infections (UTIs) for the effect of active treatment of asymptomatic bacteriuria on the risk of developing a symptomatic UTI recurrence.” – Daron Smith, University College London Hospitals, London, UK

“This article highlights such areas of ambiguity, including atherosclerotic burden, as well as mental stress-induced and vascular dysfunction-induced ischemia, which is believed to occur more commonly in women than in men and demonstrates the complexity of acute coronary syndrome beyond simply culprit lesion diagnosis” – Nanette Wenger & Tina Varghese, Emory University, Atlanta, USA

“To operate or not operate. That is the question. The never ending controversy regarding endometriomas, surgery, and IVF is once again brought to light by Professor Jacques Donnez… The clear explanation for how endometriomas have a negative impact on the number of oocytes retrieved and oocyte quality (and his citations) should convince us that they should not be there at the time of IVF, except in selected cases, which is not what we see and read about nowadays. This article is a good read, with concise and clear thoughts.” – Edgardo Rolla, Fertilab Medical Center, Buenos Aires, Argentina

 Current Top 3 recommendations

Rankings are generated using the article recommended in F1000Prime during the preceding 30 days.

“In this work, Nicola Aceto’s group provides a set of striking and compelling evidence that breast tumor cells’ dissemination and ability to form distal metastatic foci is linked to the the formation of clusters of circulating tumor cells in close association with white blood cells…This work extends the importance of collective cancer cell behavior and of the interaction between cancer and host cells as a mechanism that, at least in breast cancer, operates to enhance metastatic potency..” – Giorgio Scita, IFOM – FIRC Institute of Molecular Oncology Foundation, Milan, Italy

“The paper contains the remarkable achievement of an expanded 8 letter genetic alphabet for DNA and RNA (“Hachimoji” DNA/RNA), which is an important step for the development of a true synthetic biology. The paper contains a thermodynamic characterization of this novel type of DNA, structure determination, and even demonstrates transcription of Hachimoji DNA into RNA.” – Friedrich Simmel, Technical University of Munich, Garching, Germany

“his study, which is paradigm shifting, demonstrates for the first time that liberal platelet transfusion in thrombocytopenic premature newborns not only fails to prevent bleeding, but actually strikingly increases both bleeding and mortality.” – Neil Blumberg, University of Rochester Medical Center, USA

Hidden Jewels

Hidden Jewels rankings only include articles published in specialist journals, recommended in F1000Prime during the preceding 30 days.

“The fungus Fusarium graminearum is a devastating pathogen to a variety of important crops. Here, the authors screened more than 12,000 bacterial isolates from the wheat head microbiome, and identified Pseudomonas piscium ZJU60 with high antagonistic activity against Fusarium head blight… This study has far-reaching implications in practical applications and future mechanistic investigation. This is one of the most comprehensive and elegant studies of biocontrol agents.” – Xiaorong Lin, University of Georgia, Athens, USA

“This paper reviews the use of the mouse, and by extension the use of other major model organisms like the fly and worm, as power components of the research cycle to investigate human genetic and phenotypic variation and disease in humans. The authors review the major mechanisms for true experimental investigations in the mouse system, so this is a good paper to learn about the complex genetic studies that can take place in model organism systems, and how this work informs and extends our understand of genomic and genetic systems.” – Judith A Blake, The Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor, US

“This paper shows the complexity of leukocytes that cross the endothelial monolayer under inflammatory conditions using sophisticated in vivo models. It clearly indicates the importance of two cell types that work together to get the job done… This paper not only shows the importance of the interplay between leukocytes and endothelial cells, it also discovers the existence of discrete stages of the diapedesis step.” – Jaap van Buul, Academic Medical Center at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands