WTF - #WomenInStroke

I consider including a male in a female study is diluting the results of the female trial. Why would anyone do that when it is so vital that we finally get the issues studied?

there was another (unanswered) question - if transwomen/men were to be included in clinical trials, would this be according to their sex or gender?

The answer is supposed to be "Either and/or both, according to relevance" I would hope (while knowing it isn't common practice). (Let's draw a veil over the number of times I raise this when reviewing something for a journal publication.)

Heidari S, Babor TF, De Castro P, Tort S, Curno M. Sex and Gender Equity in Research: rationale for the SAGER guidelines and recommended use. Res Integr Peer Rev. 2016 May 3;1:2. doi: 10.1186/s41073-016-0007-6. PMID: 29451543; PMCID: PMC5793986.

Reporting sex and gender in medical research - The Lancet

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(19)31041-4/fulltext

A trial concerning stroke risk in women would be completely pointless if males of any sort were included. Honestly it is ridiculous.

• if recruitment for women in clinical trails is low, could we include transwomen? (by the chair of the webinar 😳)

Unless the chair was acting faux naïf, I have to wonder if people have developed ideology worms.

Thanks for the update.

It think though, it is right to be wary. I think any study into strokes in female patients has to be kept separate because males on oestrogen need their very own studies. It would be bonkers to have them included.

This.

Quite - surely the most logical next group would be transmen?

After centuries of being overlooked in medical research, when we finally are acknowledged as needing separate consideration, we have to share the stage, the webinar and most likely the research funding with special men. I have no doubt, that the proportion of time and money spend on this, spent on men, will far outweigh the number of women affected, meanwhile over in the gender medicine sector.... no one is talking about implications and side effects.

Excellent point. It's an incoherent mess that is already causing massive harm - just look at all the mentally vulnerable young people who've had their bodies wrecked from experimental / unevidenced drugs and surgery.

Political activism should have no place in medicine - as @Brefugee commented:
"everyone involved in any kind of trials and research (conducting or reporting on it) should just be shouting "will there be sex disaggregated data avaliable?" followed by "why not?"

OP is planning to attend, so we might find out.

Yes I agree. I think the categorisation of them into the same webinar is clumsy but given the linguistic separation I suspect this is an attempt to try and cover as much ground in one webinar as possible rather than trying to meet some sort of D&I quota.

It is not very clearly presented, but the risks of taking wrong sex hormones need to be studied and widely publicised. An acquaintence who had transitioned m to f died from a massive stroke. The medical staff at the time said that the medication was probably the cause. That person had just turned 40 and it was devastating for the family. People need to know the risks.

This is the sort of things TRAs should be campaigning on. Pretty much every other minority group I can think of ask to be studied as a discrete group when their characteristics mean they are likely to have different issues/presentation etc.

If ideology wasn't at play, TRAs would be wanting health risks that come with the healthcare they seek (hormones, surgery etc.) to be understood and mitigated. Instead, they obsess on perception and optics.

Important questions:
What acute and chronic risks come with taking cross sex hormones (these are not hormone replacements!). More specifically, testosterone with natal females and oestrogen in natal males.
Then, when this is established, the questions linked to spotting symptoms early within these populations should be identified, alongside the best treatment pathways.

It is crazy that those supposedly 'advocating' for trans people are focussing on language, micro aggressions and being included in the sex group they don't belong to.

I can't think of any other activist groups doing the same

I can't believe one of the discussion points in this seminar is "Are females underrepresented in clinical trials?"

the only issue I'd have with that is that actually as we know it isn't a question so they need to reword: females are underrepresented in clinical trials.

I recently re-read Invisible Women. And frankly i think that everyone involved in any kind of trials and research (conducting or reporting on it) should just be shouting "will there be sex disaggregated data avaliable?" followed by "why not?"

Agreed, but this is a webinar looking at the effects of hormone therapies in women and in trans women and reporting the most recent clinical studies. It doesn't necessarily mean the two have been conflated in the underlying studies.

They've bundled some disparate but slightly adjacent topics. I don't think they did it to give transwomen 'webinar euphoria'. The description makes it far too obvious that females and transwomen are different things (the bigots!)

The only advantage here is that if men are now affected by <insert disease> then the money might fall off the magic money tree to actually research it. Like now men can get endometriosis I'm sure it's going less than 10 years to diagnose it😑

If TW are more at risk (than who?)

Than men not taking female hormones.

then there should be proper research on the subject

Pretty sure there is a fair amount of this out there.

But they have zero relevance in the context of sex-specific medical research.

Agreed, but this is a webinar looking at the effects of hormone therapies in women and in trans women and reporting the most recent clinical studies. It doesn't necessarily mean the two have been conflated in the underlying studies.

Surely even if a TW is taking oestrogen, he isn't necessarily taking the same amount as a woman, and even if he is taking the exact same amount of the same drug as a women, the effect on his male body would not necessarily be the same as the effect of the same amount of the same drug on a female body. Because as you know biology and pharmakinetics are legendarily transphobic.

It's just not good science.

Male people who take female hormones are obviously going to have unique medical needs and presentations.

But lumping them in with female people is medically unhelpful, disadvantages and confuses the issues specific to female medical care, and is just ego boosting the male people by saying 'look at us treating you as 'real' women'.

As usual, male ego is the primary driving force, and women are sacrificed to propping it up.

I wondered that, but perhaps the focus is on those taking female hormone therapy, or perhaps trans men are included in the "female" groups mentioned?