Males and females differ in prevalence, treatment responses, and survival rates for a variety of diseases. For cardiac disease, women almost uniformly fare far worse than men. There are likely many reasons for this, and scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Princeton University seemed to have found one deep inside cells before we’re even born.
Published in the journal Development Cell, this research suggests that male-female differences in protein expression occur immediately after embryonic cells become heart cells called cardiomyocytes. This is the earliest stage of heart development, well before the embryo is exposed to sex hormones.
