Big news in the world of medicine surfaced this week: The National Institutes of Health promised a whopping $10.1 million to fund the scientific study of ailments and diseases ranging from migraines to strokes. The best part? The money will go specifically towards making sure women and female animals are a part of clinical trials. This will allow scientists and medical researchers to have a significantly greater amount of information concerning women's health to analyze.
Because of the frequent hormone changes that could lead to potentially skewed results, women can be more difficult subjects to study. This means experts "literally know less about every aspect of female biology compared to male biology," Janine Austin Clayton, MD, associate director for research on women's health at the NIH, said to the New York Times. Especially in studying conditions such as migraines, where two-thirds of those affected regularly are in fact, women, having more data to study will only benefit us in the future.