A thread: We had an excellent chat this week at our lab meeting about whether to control for menstrual cycle in human vascular physiology - sparked by the Point/Counterpoint in @JPhysiol published earlier this year

A couple of great points were raised by both sides:

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First, context matters
- whether or not to control for menstrual cycle (MC) might depend on the research question you are asking. If your question requires sex hormones to be "controlled" to answer your question - maybe it might be best.

Second, generalizability
-not controlling for MC only allows you to generalize your results to females in the "low hormone" phase. We only spend ~20% of our cycle here - for those who are not on contraceptives that alter that! clinical trails might be best not to "control" MC

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some points that were brought up in our conversation:

1) the question was never whether or not to test females!

We should always include them (unless your question REALLY doesn't call for it- like questions about the prostrate).

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2) If you do control for MC (i.e. test females in their low hormone phase) and find a difference between sexes - do NOT attribute these differences to their sex hormones - you controlled for that! ;)

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3) DOCUMENT everything.

This might mean asking somewhat awkward questions- but will provide the insight you need to report accurately.

On this note, when possible -measure sex hormones, not just "female" sex hormones - testosterone is important and males have estrogen too!

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4) Even if there are no sex differences, report females and males separately. The only way to move forward with women's health research is to have an accurate representation of our health! Future meta-analysis and systematic reviews on this topic RELY on separate reporting.

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Thanks to everyone at @ExercisePreg who participated in this conversation and helped generate this compilation of ideas.

#womenshealth #research #alwayslearning #femalephysiology #progress

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