Including Women in HIV Research

Segment Description: Ian Frank, MD, Professor of Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, discusses the need to include women in HIV research.

Interview Transcript (modified slightly for readability):

Frank: Women are not included at the same proportion as the rate of infection in women in antiretroviral therapy clinical trials.

People should remember that worldwide there are as many women living with HIV infection as men. In the developed world we tend to focus on the epidemic among men who have sex with men, we think about intravenous drug users, but women are still getting infected. And they're not studied.

Or I would say, rather than not studied, they don't participate at the same frequency as men, in proportion to the numbers of individuals that are infected. We need to remember when we're talking about new drugs, when we're talking about new preventative strategies, that we need to include women in these studies, as we include men.