Overcoming sex bias in clinically relevant microbiome research

Sarah Allard, Jack Gilbert and Beatriz Penalver Bernabe from the University of California San Diego (CA, USA) and University of Illinois (USA) delve into the historic exclusion of women from clinical research studies. Examining the continual impact of this exclusion on microbiome research – as well as the development of the COVID-19 vaccine – they go on to provide their opinion on how we might move forwards, highlighting important considerations while doing so.   Historically, women have been excluded from clinical research, both as subjects and as research scientists. Up until the late 1980s, most clinical trials exclusively used male...