Photo Credit: Maggie Bartlett, NHGRI / Wikimedia Commons
How much can a hormonal difference affect an experiment’s outcome?
Mice have gone through many experiments to help scientists understand the brain. However, it has recently been pointed out that female mice have not been being used in the studies. Why is that?
For years scientists have dismissed female rodents because they come with too many variables for lab study. The largest variable they identified were the hormone surges that affect a female’s behavior. They stated, as a result, the study would be compromised.
Neuroscientist Rebecca Shansky points out that male animals can be just as hormonal as females. There is no reason that both kinds of animals aren’t getting the same treatment in the labs.
Females are driven by estrogen while males are driving by testosterone. Both are extremely sensitive and can affect the moods and behaviors of humans and mice. Testosterone can show poor memory performance, but when spiked, the mice can be perfect in the maze. If testosterone is too high, it will cause memory issues once again.
Both animals show signs of variables, but it just comes at different times and different lengths. Female and male mice will react differently to different situations and that is something that just cannot be left out of lab studies. Focusing on just male rodents is a huge risk that could result in missing key data that could provide useful information.
If there are differences found between males and females, it is worth exploring. Of course, this will take more time and more money, but the results could prove invaluable to what the study shows. This will be a very slow process, but worth the effort.
As with many changes in science, things take time. But, male and females are very different, and all experiments should highlight the differences, which can lead to finding out why there are differences.
