Since then, just a few common drugs have been studied exclusively for sex differences.1 "We still have a long way to go," says Berg. "There aren't that many studies done on drugs in the market." In fact, it was only in 1999 that the National Institutes of Health held a scientific meeting on the subject.2 Investigation in this area is not merely academic; the issue of different metabolism rates has proven deadly for some women.
One reason these studies have not been done, according to Michael Smolensky, professor of environmental physiology, University of Texas School of Public Health at Houston, is funding is hard to come by. Also, the studies are complicated and require many subjects in many categories to conduct them properly. Susan Wood, the Food and Drug Administration's director of the Office of Women's Health, counters that the issue was, and still is, a question of clinical relevance. ...
