Occurrence Of Sex Differences Research Articles

Do Sex Differences Exist in the Establishment of "Do Not Attempt Resuscitation" Orders and Survival in Patients Successfully Resuscitated From In-Hospital Cardiac Arrest?

BackgroundWomen have higher utilization of “do not attempt resuscitation” (DNAR) orders during treatment for critical illness. Occurrence of sex differences in the establishment of DNAR orders after resuscitation from in‐hospital cardiac arrest is unknown. Whether differences in DNAR use by sex lead to disparities in survival remains unclear.Methods and ResultsWe identified 71 820 patients with return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) after in‐hospital cardiac arrest from the Get With The Guidelines–Resuscitation registry. Multivariable models evaluated the association between de novo DNAR (anytime after ROSC, within 12 hours of ROSC, or within 72 hours of ROSC) by sex and the association between sex and survival to discharge accounting for DNAR. All models accounted for clustering of patients within hospital and adjusted for demographic and cardiac arrest characteristics. The cohort included 30 454 (42.4%) women, who were slightly more likely than male participants to establish DNAR orders anytime after ROSC (45.0% versus 43.5%; adjusted relative risk: 1.15 [95% CI, 1.10–1.20]; P<0.0001). Of those with DNAR orders, women were more likely to be DNAR status within the first 12 hours (51.8% versus 46.5%; adjusted relative risk: 1.40 [95% CI, 1.30–1.52]; P<0.0001) and within 72 hours after ROSC (75.9% versus 70.9%; adjusted relative risk: 1.35 [95% CI, 1.26–1.45]; P<0.0001). However, no difference in survival to hospital discharge between women and men (34.5% versus 36.7%; adjusted relative risk: 1.00 [95% CI, 0.99–1.02]; P=0.74) was appreciated.ConclusionsIn patients successfully resuscitated from in‐hospital cardiac arrest, there was no survival difference between men and women while accounting for DNAR. However, women had a higher rate of DNAR status early after resuscitation (<12 and <72 hours) in comparison to men.

Sex differences in the activation of language cortex during childhood

Sex differences have been well documented in the behavioral literature but have occurred inconsistently in the neuroimaging literature. This investigation examined the impact of subject age, language task, and cortical region on the occurrence of sex differences in functional magnetic resonance imaging. Two hundred and five (104 m, 101 f) right handed, monolingual English speaking children between the ages of 5 and 18 years were enrolled in this study. The study used fMRI at 3 T to evaluate BOLD signal variation associated with sex, age, and their interaction. Children completed up to four language tasks, which involved listening to stories, prosody processing, single word vocabulary identification, and verb generation. A sex difference for behavioral performance was found for the prosodic processing task only. Brain activation in the classical left hemisphere language areas of the brain and their right homologues were assessed for sex differences. Although left lateralization was present for both frontal and temporal regions for all but the prosody task, no significant sex differences were found for the degree of lateralization. Sex × age interaction effects were found for all but the task involving single word vocabulary. However effect sizes associated with the sex differences were small, which suggests that relatively large sample sizes would be needed to detect these effects reliably.

Sex differences in cognitive functions

Abstract Gender differences in neuropsychological functioning of patients with psychiatric disorders have been studied extensively in the last years. The available studies provide conflicting results, which can be attributed to the complexity of variables influencing cognitive sex differences. In the present study, we tried to evaluate the magnitude of gender differences in verbal and visual–spatial functions and to correlate the results with a self-rating of these abilities in healthy men and women. Ninety-seven college students (51 women and 46 men) were examined with a neuropsychological battery, focusing on verbal and visual–spatial abilities. In general, we found, that women tend to perform at a higher level than men on most verbal tests and men outperfom women on visual–spatial tasks. Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning, that the effect sizes were generally small, which suggests the assumption, that the overlap in the distribution of male and female scores is much greater than the difference between them. Additionally, in a self-rating scale, men rated their spatial abilities significantly superior to those of women, while women did not rate their verbal abilities superior to those of men. In this context, the relevance of socio-cultural factors, educational factors and training on the occurrence of sex differences is highlighted, as these factors add significantly to the overall explanation of neuropsychological task-performance.

Sex Variation in the Nutritional State of Urban Zulu Adults: II. Serum Protein Levels and Prevalence of Edema

T HIS paper comprises a further report on an investigation into the occurrence of sex differences in the nutritional state of a population saliiple of Zulu adults residing in a housing schenie for Africans in the city of Durban, South Africa. A previous report has dealt with the findings in respect to weight, skinfold thickness and the mucocutaneous signs of malnutrition.’ The present report deals with the findings in respect to serum protein levels and the prevalence of edema.