The Fact
Women experience adverse drug reactions about twice as often as men. Research on sex differences in pharmacokinetics—the way the body absorbs, distributes, metabolizes and eliminates drugs—shows that giving women and men the same dose can produce different drug concentrations and different exposure times.
What This Means
The same pill at the same dose does not necessarily create the same chemical exposure in a woman and a man. A prescription can be “equal” on paper while their bodies handle it differently.
Medication safety depends on knowing the body receiving the medication, not merely the number printed on the tablet.
Sources
- Zucker I, Prendergast BJ. Sex differences in pharmacokinetics predict adverse drug reactions in women. Biol Sex Differ. 2020. PMID: 32503637. See also Sex Differences in Pharmacokinetics. PMID: 37439843.