While women's rights in most of the world have advanced significantly over the past several decades, these have begun to slip back in many countries, including the US, with states and courts restricting access to reproductive rights and healthcare. The maternal mortality rate in the US, which is the worst in the developed world, jumped 60% in a two-year span.
This regression of women's rights is expected to worsen the gender health gap, which currently stands at 25%. In other words, women spend 25% more time in poor health than men, with additional lost productivity adding up to around seven days per woman, according to a report by McKinsey. The report also says that if this gap is closed, it could reduce the time women spend in poor health by almost two-thirds and, by 2040, contribute up to $1 trillion to the economy each year.
But what is the cause of this gender health gap? According to microbiologist, immunologist, and rheumatology fellow Dr. Emily Stein, one major reason is the lack of proper research and funding into women and their health. This results in a lack of knowledge on how to treat illnesses in women.
One such example is that, in research laboratories, most test subject mice are male. This results in a lack of data on how medicines work on females, leading to reduced efficacy or more side effects.
"When I was at Stanford, we used male mice for rheumatoid arthritis research, despite women being more prone to said condition," Dr. Stein says. "This might be why most of the drugs work only a third of the time for women and why they need to cycle through different drugs. Many medications today aren't built for addressing the true needs of the diseased population."
Dr. Stein says that, despite women making the most healthcare-related purchases globally for their families, they tend to suffer from their own health issues in silence and may sometimes resort to non-scientifically verified "cures" that do more harm than good. However, things are changing, and social media has allowed female voices to come together and be heard more, drawing attention to women's health issues. She believes that raising the issue into public consciousness is incredibly important, as this is the only way to get the markets to move and for money to be deployed to research that takes women's unique biology into account.
In 2017, Dr. Stein founded Primal Health, a molecular biotechnology company that seeks to combat and rehabilitate imbalances in the mouth's microbiome, which has been linked to disorders in other areas of the body. For example, periodontal disease, also known as inflamed gums, has the potential to spread to other parts of the body, affecting almost every other system. One such bacterium causing periodontal disease, Porphyromonas gingivalis, is significantly linked to atherosclerosis and Alzheimer's disease.
Within the next few months, the company will also be starting a new startup to address the unmet needs in women's health specifically. The new company will be called Primal Haven and will work with a consortium of advisors globally to do community-based learning. This will improve the research and products the company develops and allow them to tailor their methodologies and implementation according to various cultural differences around the world.
The company also places a unique emphasis on studying women's health problems and developing products tested on women. With test subjects' consent, Primal Health obtains biofilms of patients with conditions such as bacterial vaginosis, recurrent yeast infections, and urinary tract infections, studying their microbiome and metabolome to determine the causes behind these ailments, as well as what interventions can be made. Primal Health explores areas of study where little is known, such as the gut-brain axis and the urinary system-brain axis.
Stein believes that, due to the regulatory and funding inertia of large university laboratories and pharmaceutical companies, startups such as Primal Health will be able to harness their agility and adaptability to help close the gender health gap, conducting vital research into women's issues. Combined with growing awareness among women that they do not need to suffer in silence, this will help direct more attention, funding, and research towards women's health.
"The current research funding process is so strict and rigid in design that it doesn't allow researchers to have discourse and iterate in real-time; that's why it's so slow," Dr. Stein says. "And this is where I think startups like us, who are working within the community and in touch with the problems that populations face, can learn very quickly and pick up the slack. Hopefully, with the startups' example, the rest of the industry will take the cue and begin working together to close the gender health gap and increase productivity which benefits everyone, regardless of gender."
