Cambridge Researchers Lead Push to Eliminate Male Bias in Healthcare with Groundbreaking Research on Women’s Health

Dr Amanda Sferruzzi-Perri. Photography: Chris Radburn/Fixed Point Media

A team of leading researchers at the University of Cambridge are challenging centuries of male bias in healthcare, working to ensure that biological sex is no longer ignored in medical science - and advocating that women’s health needs are finally treated with the urgency they deserve.

Despite decades of progress in medicine, women remain significantly more likely to be misdiagnosed or receive inappropriate treatment for serious health conditions. For instance, women are 50% more likely than men to receive the wrong initial diagnosis for a heart attack. When they report pain, men are typically prescribed painkillers, while women are more often given sedatives or antidepressants.

This disparity, experts argue, stems from a medical system historically shaped by men - one in which female biology has often been ignored, dismissed, or deemed too complicated to study due to hormonal fluctuations.

“Research that wasn’t designed with women in mind has contributed to a healthcare system that doesn’t meet women’s needs,” said Professor Amanda Sferruzzi-Perri from the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience and St. John’s College when speaking with Jacqueline Garget, a writer for the university website.

Sferruzzi-Perri is leading a new network of Cambridge experts determined to drive more equitable and effective healthcare.

Sferruzzi-Perri points out that major life stages unique to women - such as puberty, pregnancy, breastfeeding, and menopause - can cause lasting changes to the immune, metabolic, cardiovascular, and respiratory systems. These changes not only affect women’s susceptibility to certain conditions but also influence how diseases manifest and how treatments work.

“We can’t simply generalise medical treatment across the sexes,” she said. “The female body is not a variant of the male body - it is a distinct biological system that needs to be studied in its own right.”

The newly formed Cambridge network includes researchers from multiple disciplines. Among them is Professor Amy Milton from the Department of Psychology, who is studying mental health through a sex-specific lens. Her goal is to create more personalised treatment strategies by understanding the biological and psychological mechanisms behind individual symptoms. She notes that certain mental health conditions, like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), are about twice as prevalent in women as in men - a discrepancy that remains poorly understood.

“This is largely because it has only recently become a requirement to include both sexes in pre-clinical medical research,” Milton explains.

“Unless scientists study both males and females, we’ll never understand where the differences lie - or how to treat people effectively.”

She emphasises that hormonal fluctuations in women can significantly influence the outcomes of mental health treatments. For example, varying levels of oestrogen and progesterone can affect how well a patient responds to exposure therapy for PTSD. “If it’s just a matter of timing appointments in line with the menstrual cycle, that’s an incredibly easy win. But right now, we’re missing those wins - and potentially many more.”

Breastfeeding is another critical, yet under-researched, aspect of women’s health. Dr Alecia-Jane Twigger, a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow in the Departments of Biochemistry and Pharmacology, is tackling this gap at the Cambridge Lactation Lab. Despite breastfeeding being one of the most important factors for infant nutrition and immunity, support for women facing challenges is minimal.

“There’s a persistent myth that breastfeeding is ‘natural’ and therefore easy,” says Twigger when speaking to Garget. “But many women who give their all still struggle - and we’re only just starting to ask why.”

Her lab is pioneering non-invasive methods to study lactation using organoids - miniature, milk-producing 3D cell cultures developed from human breast milk. These “mini boobs,” as Twigger affectionately calls them, may hold the key to understanding why some women experience low milk supply and how to safely medicate breastfeeding mothers.

“With our models, we can test whether drugs taken by mothers transfer into their milk - a question that has gone unanswered because pregnant and breastfeeding women are usually excluded from clinical trials,” she says.

Meanwhile, Professor Emma Pomeroy from the Department of Archaeology is taking a long-term, evolutionary view of women’s health. By studying human bones from as far back as 400,000 years ago, she’s investigating how key life events - like menstruation, pregnancy, and menopause - intersect with long-term health outcomes.

Obstructed labour, a condition once believed to be a fixed result of evolutionary constraints on the human pelvis, may in fact be influenced by modifiable factors like early-life nutrition.

“We’ve found that girls with access to a better diet developed larger pelvises, reducing the risk of obstructed labour,” says Pomeroy to Garget.

Her research also explores how menopause might be visible in skeletal and dental records, such as in the cementum layers of teeth or disruptions in enamel growth. These markers could eventually help us understand how menopause impacted not just modern women, but also our ancient ancestors like the Neanderthals.

Across these projects, a common thread emerges: the urgent need to reconsider how sex differences shape every aspect of health and disease. From heat regulation and pain sensitivity to vaccine response and drug metabolism, male and female bodies often react in fundamentally different ways - yet until recently, most research was conducted only on men.

That’s starting to change. Research funders are now encouraging, even requiring, scientists to include both sexes in pre-clinical studies - or to explain why they haven’t. Pharmaceutical companies are asking whether drugs are safe for women, leading to better-designed clinical trials. And at Cambridge, there’s a growing recognition that key aspects of female reproductive biology, long overlooked, are central to better healthcare for all.

“It’s crazy that biological sex has been so overlooked in understanding the body’s responses to drugs and treatments,” says Professor Amanda Sferruzzi-Perri. “It’s time we made a concerted effort to address this, and drive forward a personalised approach to improving human health.”

With its multi-disciplinary approach, the Cambridge initiative hopes to spark a broader cultural and scientific shift - one where women's health is no longer an afterthought, but a driving force behind a more inclusive, effective healthcare system.

“We’re building a foundation of research that takes women’s biology seriously,” says Sferruzzi-Perri. “So that in the future, every patient - regardless of sex - receives the best possible care.”

Together, the team is working to generate evidence-based solutions that acknowledge and accommodate the complexity of female health — a step they say is long overdue.

By putting women at the centre of medical research, Cambridge scientists hope to transform how healthcare is delivered — ensuring it is safer, smarter, and more inclusive for all.