Gender disparity in pediatrics: a review of the current literature

BACKGROUND: Gender-based medicine is an innovative branch of biomedical research and represents a new perspective for the future of health research. Many studies have been published on gender medicine in adults but very few data regarding children are available. LITERATURE SEARCH AND RESULTS: A literature search covering articles published between 1stJuly, 2006 and 1st February, 2017 and concerning children only was conducted using multiple keywords and standardized terminology in Pubmed database. The search was limited to English-language publications. All relevant articles on endocrines, neurological, psychiatric, gastrointestinal, immunological, oncological, rheumatic, pneumological disorders, infectious diseases and analgesia were evaluated and pertinent articles were included in this review. Most of the available studies on gender disparity in childhood are about endocrine and neuro-psychiatric disorders, while there are few data in other areas of medicine. CONCLUSIONS: Even if several studies on pediatric gender differences can be found on literature, few of them move forwards to analyze the reasons of the observed diversity. No data on pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic differences between boys and girls can be found. Hence, more efforts should be directed to investigate these topics in childhood.