Interesting Features at PWN for 5.11.15

News from the PWN Pipeline: 

Medical Researchers Still Skip Gender-Based Data

In 1991, Dr. Bernadine Healy, the first female director of the National Institutes of Health, reported the troubling news that women who had heart attacks were receiving a different quality of care as men because they presented with different symptoms that often resulted in misdiagnosis or improper treatment. Part of the reason for this difference in care is that women are not routinely involved in clinical trials and therefore treatments are often designed based on how male clinical trial participants reacted to specific drugs, leading to errant dosing and treatment of women. Genetic differences in drug treatment reactivity are a critical factor in determining the success of a potential drug, and reflect a key reason to mandate the inclusion of women and minorities in drug testing and clinical trials. Decades after Dr. Healy first spoke out on this issue, Senator Dianne Feinstein has recently asked the Government Accountability Office to ensure that women are included in clinical trials and her efforts led to an NIH policy change to include more women in these trials.


Advancement Opportunities

Postdoctoral position available at the Department of Anesthesia at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA

Exciting opportunity for a scientist interesting in studying mechanisms underlying the genesis of migraine and post-traumatic headaches. The NIH funded project involves in vivo recording from trigeminal nocicepters in rodents together with the use of optogenetic and chemogenetic methods. The successful applicant will have a PhD in neuroscience, pharmacology or physiology, and extensive in vivo extracellular electrophysiology experience. Knowledge of immunohistochemistry is also preferred.

Interested applicants: CV | 1-page description of career goals | contact info for 3 references
Send to: Dr. Dan Levy | dlevy1@bidmc.harvard.edu