In terms of health, inequalities between men and women are significant and appear from adolescence

A new study examines disparities in the 20 leading causes of disease and premature death among men and women. The modeling uses data from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021 from 7 regions around the world between 1990 and 2021, to compare the total number of years of life lost to disease and premature deaths (a measure known under the name disability-adjusted life years (DALY).

Overall, men are more often affected by problems leading to premature death while women are more affected by illness and disability, in part because they tend to live longer than men.

More premature deaths among men

According to this study, men are more affected by health problems leading to premature deaths, particularly for COVID-19, road accidents and a series of cardiovascular, respiratory and liver diseases.

For lung cancer and chronic kidney disease, gender differences tend to be small at young ages and widen over the lifespan. The exception is the disproportionate number of road injuries among young men (aged 10-24) in all regions of the world.

“Our findings highlight the important and unique health issues facing men (…) We need national health plans and strategies to address the health needs of men across the lifespan, including interventions targeting behavioral risks such as alcohol use and smoking, which typically begin at a young age” says one of the authors, Dr. Vedavati Patwardhan of the University of California, San Diego.

But to date, only a handful of countries (including Australia, Ireland, Iran, Brazil, Malaysia, Mongolia and South Africa) have developed national policies aimed at improving the health of men.

More illness and disability among women

Conversely, women experience higher levels of illness and disability than men because they generally live longer. The biggest contributors to their health loss are low back pain, depressive disorders, headache disorders, anxiety disorders, other musculoskeletal disorders, Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, and HIV/AIDS .

Mental health issues and musculoskeletal disorders disproportionately affect women in all regions of the world. These differences begin early in life and continue to intensify with age.

“It is clear that women’s health care needs to extend well beyond the priority areas hitherto granted by health systems and research funding, such as sexual and reproductive issues.” says one of the authors, Gabriela Gil of the University of Washington.

Propose prevention sensitive to sex and gender

These global differences have remained largely constant over the past 30 years, but for some diseases, such as diabetes, the difference has almost tripled between 1990 and 2021, to the disadvantage of men. At the same time, there has been a disproportionate increase in global health losses caused by depressive disorders, anxiety and certain musculoskeletal disorders at the expense of women, highlighting that the burden of chronic diseases they suffer continues to rise .

The authors point out that the identified health differences begin to emerge in adolescence, coinciding with a critical period when gender norms and attitudes intensify and puberty reshapes self-perceptions. This trend highlights the need for responses that take sex and gender into account from an early age to prevent the appearance and worsening of health problems (Editor’s note: the authors distinguish between “sex” linked to biological and physiological characteristics and “gender” which refers to socially constructed roles, behaviors and identities).

The authors note certain limitations to their study related to the quality of the available data, and the fact that it does not include conditions specific to women and men, such as gynecological diseases and prostate cancers, in order to allow comparisons between populations and to highlight areas where sex- and gender-sensitive interventions could have substantial health benefits.