研究顯示,同種疾病女性確診晚於男性數年大綱

For a wide range of diseases, diagnosis comes later in life for women than for men, according to a large Danish study.

根據丹麥的一項大規模研究，對於很大部分疾病，女性的確診時間要比男性晚好幾年。

Researchers don't know whether the later diagnoses are due to genetics, the environment, possible biases in the healthcare system - or some combination of reasons.

研究者不知道這個現象（女性更晚診斷）是因爲遺傳、環境、衛生醫療系統的偏見，或是幾者皆有。

The study of health data from 6.9 million Danish people found that across hundreds of diseases, women on average were diagnosed when they were about four years older than the age at which the conditions were recognized in men.

這項來自六百九十萬丹麥人的健康數據的研究，發現有數百種疾病，女人被診斷出來的時間平均比男人晚四年。

"We're not just looking at one disease here, we're looking at all diseases and we are looking at an entire population, from cradle to grave," lead author Soren Brunak from the University of Copenhagen told Reuters Health by phone.

哥本哈根大學的索恩·布魯納克通過電話告訴路透社健康欄目：“我們並不只關注一種疾病，我們關注所有疾病，觀察所有的人，從他們出生到死亡。”

On average, women received cancer diagnoses 2.5 years after men. They received diagnoses for metabolic diseases like diabetes 4.5 years later.

女性平均比男性平均晚2.5年被診斷出癌症。例如糖尿病等代謝性疾病，她們通常會在4.5年後才被診斷出來。

"(This) actually surprised us quite a lot," Brunak said. "Men generally have a tendency to get to the doctor later... So presumably the difference in onset is even larger."

“這實際上讓我們異常驚訝”，他說，“通常來說，男性傾向於晚些就醫，所以由此推測初始的差異甚至會更大。”

Brunak and his team considered incidence rates of diseases in the 18 broad categories of the ICD-10 diagnosis system managed by the World Health Organization.

布魯納克和他的團隊考慮了世界衛生組織管理的ICD-10診斷系統18大類疾病的發病率。

The study wasn't designed to explain the causes of the differences. Another limitation is that researchers only looked at diagnoses made in hospitalized patients.

這項研究並非是要解釋造成這些差異的緣由，它的另一個侷限性是僅僅關注了住院確診的病人。

Dr. Noel Bairey Merz, director of the Barbra Streisand Women's Heart Center at the Cedars-Sinai Smidt Heart Institute, who was not involved in the study, pointed out to Reuters Health that the study therefore lacks information on age at diagnosis for people who didn't require hospitalization.

沒有參與這項研究的西達斯-西奈斯米特心臟研究所芭芭拉·史翠珊婦女心臟中心主任諾埃爾·拜瑞·默茨博士向路透社健康版指出，這項研究因此缺乏不需要住院治療的患者的年齡診斷信息。

"On the other hand," she said, "being hospitalized is a sign of a serious illness, so (that) adds significance to the diagnosis and supports that disease onset may be later in women."

“另一方面，”她說，“住院表明病情比較嚴重，所以(這項研究)對疾病診斷有額外意義，同時也贊同女性可能會發病較晚。”

Brunak's study, published in Nature Communications, showed that the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis was a notable exception to the trend. Here, women were typically diagnosed before they suffered a fracture, while the opposite was true for men.

布魯納克的研究發表在《自然通訊》雜誌上，該研究表明，骨質疏鬆症是這種趨勢的一個顯著例外。在這裏，女性通常在骨折前就被診斷出來，而男性則恰恰相反。

"I am fascinated by this study, which generally confirms all that I present in my Stanford course on Sex and Gender in Human Physiology and Disease," said Marcia Stefanick, Director of Stanford University's Women's Health and Sex Differences in Medicine Center.

斯坦福大學女性健康與性別差異醫學中心主任馬西婭·斯蒂凡尼克說:“我對這項研究很感興趣，它基本上證實了我在斯坦福大學開設的有關人類生理學和疾病中的性別與性別的課程中提出的所有觀點。”