Women eat more healthily, visit their physician more often, and accept offers of prophylactic treatment more frequently than their male counterparts. Nevertheless, they are generally diagnosed with a rheumatic disease much later. “With systemic sclerosis, for example – diagnosis occurs a whole year later than for male patients,” said Uta Kiltz, MD, Senior physician at the Ruhrgebiet Rheumatism Center in Bochum, Germany at a press conference for the annual congress of the German Society for Rheumatology.

In addition, certain markers and antibodies can be detected earlier in men’s blood, for example – in systemic sclerosis. “What’s more, women exhibit a more diverse array of symptoms, which can make an unequivocal diagnosis difficult,” Kiltz explained.

Differences between the sexes in terms of disease progression and clinical presentation have been described for most rheumatic diseases. Roughly speaking, women often exhibit a much wider range of symptoms and report a higher disease burden, whereas men tend to experience a more severe progression of the disease.

Comorbidities also occur at different rates between the sexes. Whereas women with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) suffer more frequently from osteoporosis and depression, men are more likely to develop cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.

Gender-Sensitive Approach

Like Kiltz, Susanna S. Mestekemper, MD, PhD, of the Munich-Pasing Rheumatology Practice, also advocates a gender-sensitive approach to diagnosis and therapy. Mestekemper referred to this during the conference, stating that women are still treated more poorly than men. The difference in treatment quality results from gaps in knowledge in the following areas:

• Sex-specific differences in the diagnosis and therapy of rheumatic diseases and in basic and clinical research
• Sex-specific differences in communication between male and female patients and between male and female physicians.

Mestekemper used axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA) as a “prominent example” of false diagnoses. “Men more commonly fulfil the modified New York (mNY) criteria – involvement of the axial skeleton, the lumbar spine, and increasing radiological progression.”

In contrast, women with axSpA exhibit the following differences:

• It is more likely for the cervical spine to be affected.
• Women are more likely to suffer from peripheral joint involvement.
• They suffer more from whole body pain.
• They have fatigue and exhaustion.  
• They exhibit fewer humoral signs of inflammation (lower CRP).
• They are rarely HLA-B27 positive.

“We also have to completely rethink how we make the diagnosis in women,” said Mestekemper. The current approach leads to women with axSpA being diagnosed much later than men. “Depending on the study, the difference can range from 7 months to 2 years,” according to Mestekemper.