Women and asthma – addressing the inequality
Asthma has a disproportionate effect on women. Globally, the incidence of asthma, the frequency of asthma attacks and asthma mortality rates are higher in women than men. In the most recent analysis of asthma deaths in the UK, 70% of deaths were in women. Dr Yarunnessa Khan, who works in our Research and Innovation team, explains why we want to change this.
Fluctuations in sex hormones are known to contribute to the onset, progression and exacerbation of asthma. But we have limited knowledge in this area. A deeper understanding of the links between sex hormones and asthma could pave the way for the development of new and targeted interventions, in addition to enabling clinicians to utilise existing treatments more effectively. Globally, the impacts could be transformative for the 136 million women who live with asthma.
As described in our previous blog, in November 2020 we brought together the foremost experts from across the world to help us understand and articulate priority research areas that will address gender-based inequalities in asthma. We are committing our time and funding to help make the recommendations a reality.
Investing in sex hormones and asthma research
In order to increase our understanding of how sex hormones regulate asthma, more funding must be invested into research. Increased funding is required especially in the UK, where there is limited research activity in this area. Therefore, we are calling upon funding bodies to open themed calls specifically on sex hormones and asthma research.
We are kick-starting investment into sex hormones and asthma research in the UK by inviting project applications in our ‘Women and asthma’ funding call. In addition, we are offering pump-priming grants to encourage researchers from respiratory and other relevant disciplines to experiment with novel concepts and high-risk ideas to help build research capacity in the UK.
Investigate gender inequality in all studies by analysing new and existing datasets by sex
We recognise the importance of analysing datasets by sex to identify key differences that may be affecting women’s asthma.
We are encouraging industry leaders, CROs, medical communication agencies and key opinion leaders to work together to re-analyse historical clinical trial data by sex and publish their findings. Additionally, we want funding bodies and industry to mandate that all future data are analysed by sex.
We are paving the way in addressing this issue by offering grants to enable researchers to analyse existing datasets by sex to establish new correlations between sex and asthma. We are calling upon pharmaceutical companies to make historical data available for such analyses.
Investment in leadership
Influential leaders that can drive cross-disciplinary collaborations, attract significant funding and train future researchers are required to bring equality to asthma research, especially in the UK. We are calling upon research funders of all types to invest in building research leadership in sex hormones and asthma.
We are offering a professorial chair position to bring sex hormones and asthma research leadership in the UK to an internationally competitive level.
For details on our ‘Women and asthma’ grant round, please visit the Asthma UK website. The application submission deadline for all award types is 10 March 2022.
As sex hormones and asthma research is an emerging field in the UK, we are keen to attract a broad range of researchers to collaborate on these grants, including people working in respiratory and non-respiratory disciplines (e.g. endocrinology, immunology, epidemiology or data science), and build capacity in this area.
If you have any questions or want to discuss this theme with us, please get in touch at research@asthma.org.uk.
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