Gender-specific differences in the diagnosis and treatment of inflammatory rheumatic diseases

Abstract

Gender differences in the diagnosis and treatment of various diseases are increasingly being researched with the aim of optimizing treatment strategies and improving individual treatment success. This paper summarizes the existing literature for gender differences in inflammatory rheumatic diseases. Many, but not all, inflammatory rheumatic diseases occur more frequently in women than in men. Women more often have alonger duration of symptoms until diagnosis than men, which may be due to different clinical and radiological presentations. Across diseases, women more often have lower remission and treatment response rates to antirheumatic medication compared to men. Discontinuation rates are also higher in women than in men. Whether women are more likely to develop anti-drug antibodies to biologic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs is still unclear. For Janus kinase inhibitors, there is no evidence of differential treatment response to date. Whether individual dosing regimens and gender-adapted remission criteria are also required in rheumatology cannot be deduced from the evidence available to date.