Help
This postgraduate course/summer school is designed to provide an overview of “hot topics” in gender medicine. This year we will particularly concentrate on new insights in cardiovascular and regenerative medicine, where sex/gender aspects are increasingly appreciated and acknowledged. The invited lecturers are not only eminent in their field but are also recognized as stimulating speakers.
The program is for both scientific and clinical researchers embarking upon a PhD career at Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska Hospital, and also for those who wish to “catch up” on recent developments. We keep our doors open for knowledge sharing and brainstorming.
The course aims to introduce Gender medicine as an important scientific field focusing on differences between women and men in both health and disease. Women and men differ significantly in every system of the body and experience health and disease differently. The exploitation of sex variable in scientific investigations will help us to front questions and consequences that are of fundamental importance for the prevention, detection and/or treatment of illness. The course is for both preclinical and clinical researchers embarking upon the PhD career in medicine, and those who wish to “catch up” on recent expansion about the differences between men and women in both health and disease. We will discuss some basic methodologies, theories and cellular biology, which will be considered in the relation to clinically relevant topics important for gender medicine. Several diseases of public health concern have already been identified. Those include cardiovascular diseases, lung diseases, neuropsychiatric disorders, steroid metabolism disorders as well as inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. Moreover pharmacological aspects as well as health economical issues need to be considered in each of those conditions. Finally, further exploration of experimental models that could help to broaden our understanding of the disease process pertinent to the defined sex needs be discussed. The one week course will include mainly lectures in the biomedical field, in which gender and sex aspects will be primarily considered. Discussion forums will be organized, and the project work will be introduced.
We aim that after the course:
1. Students should be able to distinguish between the terms sex and gender.
2. Students should be able to evaluate the suitability of the design and analysis of preclinical and clinical research studies (e.g. their PhD project) to identify and quantify potential of sex and gender differences.
3. Students should be able to illustrate the scientific basis of known sex and gender differences.
4. Students should be able to identify known sex and gender differences with regard to diseases, and differences in response to, or effects of, drugs and other medical interventions in the treatment and management of these conditions.