Researchers are studying the difference in anxiety between women and men

Anxiety about health, family and money is normal for most people, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, for people with anxiety disorders, these daily worries tend to increase, even if there is little or no reason to worry.

Researchers at Indiana University School of Medicine recently studied related behaviors anxiety-Announced in Psychopharmacology— Find out how Biological factors Impact Anxiety disorder,in particular Woman.. They found that women’s anxiety increased when there were certain, life-related conditions.

Thatiane De Oliveira Sergio, Ph.D. The team led by is Woody Hopf, Ph.D. A postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory, a professor of psychiatry, and a senior researcher at the Stark Neurosciences Research Institute, he studied and deepened his understanding of male and female rodent models. Gender differences in biological responses associated with anxiety.

Anxiety disorders occur in women twice as often as in men, socially and Cultural factors According to Deolibeira, it is likely to play an important role in the development of anxiety in women.

The COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on people’s anxiety. In June 2020, months after the pandemic, 13% of Americans began using or increasing substance use to address the emotions and stress of the then unknowns about the pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. I did.

Deolibeira said women knew that they were more likely to have anxiety than men, and that many women’s roles were amplified during the pandemic. She said these life-related conditions may have increased their anxiety.

“This work is very important and now provides us with a basis for initiating and investigating even more relevant anxiety behaviors,” said Deolibeira.

Human anxiety is complex, but animal anxiety is based solely on biology.

“Biological factors play an important role in these types of mood disorders, but it can be difficult to elucidate the mechanisms that cause human anxiety,” said Deolibeira. “It is important that this rodent study be done to support the development of more effective and personalized therapies.”

By studying both male and female rodent models, they found that women and men were very different in their response to the most life-related aspects of anxiety, Hope said. Said.

In one of the behavioral tasks, rodents had to grab a pellet of food in the brightly lit center of a large arena. This creates anxious conflicts, as mice do not like light. In this task, female rats took longer to touch and ate less food than males.

Researchers also gave diazepam, a drug used to treat anxiety, to rodents, which significantly reduced anxiety in women, but had little effect on men when interacting with food. There was no. There were also other measurements that showed similarities between males and females, such as how many times the mouse approached the lit center and how long it stayed there. Therefore, only the part of the most life-related task (food in this case) showed gender differences.

Earlier studies support the idea that women’s anxiety focuses on the most life-related aspects of the situation, Hope said, which is consistent with their findings. For example, both studies showed that females responded more to predator urine than males and were more anxious in the presence of a second rat that roamed freely.

“Knowing that anxiety can manifest itself from a variety of concerns for men and women is that women are particularly acclimatized to life-related conditions, which provides better treatment based on gender differences. It’s a valuable step to look for, “said Deolibeira.