Sex differences in medicine

• Sex-linked genetic conditions
• Diseases of the reproductive system that are specific to one sex
• Social causes that relate to the gender role expected of that sex in a particular society
• Different levels of prevention, reporting, diagnosis or treatment in each gender.

  Women

• 99% of breast cancer occurs in women.
• Ovarian cancer, endometriosis and other diseases of the female reproductive system occur only in women.
• Approximately four times more women suffer from osteoporosis than men.
• Autoimmune diseases, such as Sjögren's syndrome and scleroderma, are more prevalent in women. Roughly 70 percent of those living with autoimmune diseases are female. See Sex differences in autoimmunity.
• In Western cultures, almost ten times more women than men suffer from eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa.
• Alzheimer's disease has a higher rate in women than in men.
• About two times more women than men suffer from unipolar clinical depression.
• About three times more women than men are diagnosed with borderline or histrionic personality disorder.
• Conditions such as chronic fatigue syndrome /myalgic encephalomyelitis, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome and idiopathic hypersomnia, which have unclear causes, are more common in women, with sex ratios ranging from 2:1 in IBS, fibromyalgia and idiopathic hypersomnia to 4:1 in CFS and 5:1 in POTS.
• Most people with psychogenic non-epileptic seizures are women.

  Men

• Prostate cancer and other diseases of the male reproductive system occur only in men.
• Diseases of X-linked recessive inheritance, such as colour blindness, occur more frequently in men, and haemophilia A and B occur almost exclusively in men.
• Abdominal aortic aneurysms are six times more common in men, and thus some countries have introduced screening for males at risk of suffering the condition.
• Autism is approximately 4 times more prevalent in males than females.
• Schizophrenia is about 1.4 times more common in males and on average starts 2 years earlier and has more severe symptoms.
• More than two times more men than women are affected by antisocial personality disorder and substance use disorder.
• Several cancers, including stomach cancer, oesophageal cancer, liver cancer and oral cancer, which have mostly lifestyle-based risk factors, are more common in men.