Professor Amy Milton in the Department of Psychology studies mental health conditions with the aim of developing a personalised approach for more effective treatments, grounded in a deeper mechanistic understanding of what causes an individual’s symptoms. 

She notes that the prevalence of certain mental health disorders can differ significantly between sexes, with hormonal differences likely to play a role.

“Post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, is about twice as common in women as it is in men – and we don’t understand why,” says Milton. “This is largely because it has only recently become a requirement to include both sexes in pre-clinical medical research.”

“There can be a big variation in symptoms between two patients with the same mental health diagnosis too,” she says. “This could be due to sex differences, or a range of other factors – but unless scientists include both males and females in their studies, they won’t know where those sex differences exist.”

“If it turns out that there are no sex differences for a particular mental health disorder, then we can confidently generalise treatments between males and females. But if differences do exist, it might mean that some therapies are more effective in one sex than the other.”

Milton says that effective treatment of PTSD can depend on being more aware of a woman’s fluctuating hormone levels – not ignoring them.

“Oestrogen and progesterone levels can make a difference to how well a person responds to exposure therapy. So in terms of the timing of PTSD therapy, if it's just about scheduling appointments at a specific point in the menstrual cycle then that's such an easy win,” she says.

“Just think how many other easy wins we might be missing out on because we haven’t been considering how female hormones influence the effectiveness of treatments.”

Professor Amy Milton, Department of Psychology and Downing College

Dr Emma Pomeroy, Associate Professor in the Evolution of Health, Diet and Disease in the Department of Archaeology, is turning to the past to shed light on how women’s health might be improved today.

As an archaeologist studying human bones dating from the present day back to 400,000 years ago, she’s gaining a long-term perspective on the origins of contemporary health issues.

“I want to understand which aspects of our health we might have the power to change, and which are so deeply embedded in our biology that they’re beyond our control.”

Professor Emma Pomeroy, Department of Archaeology and Newnham College

Pomeroy is using innovative methods to uncover evidence of key transitions in women's lives - such as puberty, the onset of menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, and menopause – and wants to understand how these milestones intersect with broader aspects of health.

One area where historical insight may prove valuable is obstructed labour, a complication where the baby becomes stuck in the birth canal. The traditional narrative is that evolution has led to a tight fit between a baby’s head and the birth canal in the mother’s pelvis, due to the development of upright walking and larger brain size.

This has long been seen as unchangeable, but recent research suggests otherwise. For example, early-life nutrition can significantly influence pelvic development.

“By examining skeletal remains, we can see that girls who had access to a nutritious diet grew taller and developed larger pelvises - reducing the risk of obstructed labour,” she explains. “Preventing overnutrition is just as important: the rapid transition to obesity we’re seeing across many countries increases the likelihood of bigger babies, which can also heighten the risk of obstructed labour.”

Even menopause, once thought impossible to detect in bones, might be visible through changes in tooth cementum - layers that form annually like tree rings and whose width is reduced during periods of physiological stress. Within the tooth crown itself, disruption to the layers of enamel during growth can also tell us about periods of poor nutrition and health. Pomeroy is investigating how these methods might tell us more about the lives of our close evolutionary relatives, the Neanderthals.

“Accessing information about past lives can really help us understand women’s health today, particularly the major changes in women’s lives like menopause that have been largely ignored by society,” she says.

Biological sex is a major factor in how the body responds to most drugs and vaccines. Men and women also feel and manage pain in different ways. Women are much more sensitive to heat stress than men, because their bodies store fat in different ways and regulate temperature differently. Infectious diseases can affect men and women in distinct ways. The list goes on.

Awareness of the male bias in health research is finally starting to drive change. And many aspects of female reproductive biology - key life processes – that have traditionally been largely ignored by research are gaining greater attention.

Research funders now ask scientists to take sex into account in their proposed cell and animal investigations where this might be relevant, or to justify why not. Pharmaceutical companies, too, want to know whether their drugs are safe to give to women, which means involving both sexes in clinical trials.

“It’s crazy that biological sex has been so overlooked in understanding the body’s responses to drugs and treatments.

It’s time we made a concerted effort to address this, and drive forward a personalised approach to improving human health.”

Professor Amanda Sferruzzi-Perri, Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience

Sferruzzi-Perri hopes that Cambridge's research focus on women’s health will help drive a vastly improved understanding, so that in future everyone receives the best quality health information and care.