The Fact
A pharmacokinetic analysis identified 86 drugs with substantial sex differences. Women given the same dose as men routinely had higher blood concentrations and/or longer elimination times. For drugs with higher pharmacokinetic exposure in women, 96% were also associated with more adverse drug reactions in women.
What This Means
This is the dot: when a drug stayed at higher levels or stayed longer in women’s bodies, women were also the group getting hurt more often by almost every one of those drugs.
The female excess in adverse reactions is not adequately explained as women merely “complaining more.” Measurable differences in drug exposure track with measurable differences in harm.
Sources
- Zucker I, Prendergast BJ. Sex differences in pharmacokinetics predict adverse drug reactions in women. Biol Sex Differ. 2020. PMID: 32503637. Review: PMID 37439843.