New Findings from the Woolley Lab Reveal A Difference Between the Sexes
Professor Catherine S. Woolley was featured in Northwestern News for a paper that was published and highlighted as a featured article in The Journal of Neuroscience. The study, Sex Differences in Molecular Signaling at Inhibitory Synapses in the Hippocampus, is the first to detail where males and females differ in a key molecular pathway in the brain.Woolley and her lab found that in female brains, the drug URB-597, which regulates a molecule important in neurotransmitter release, increased the inhibitory effect of a key endocannabinoid in the brain, called anandamide, causing a decrease in the release of neurotransmitters. In male brains, the drug had no effect. (The difference is not related to circulating reproductive hormones.) Woolley explains “The importance of studying sex differences in the brain is about making biology and medicine relevant to everyone, to both men and women.”
Although initially skeptical, Woolley began studying sex differences in the brain once her own data showed that differences between females and males were real. “We are not doing women -- and specifically women’s health -- any favors by pretending that things are the same if they are not. If the results of research would be different in female animals, tissues and cells, then we need to know. This is essential so that we can find appropriate diagnoses, treatments and, ultimately, cures for disease in both sexes.”
In addition to Woolley, other authors of the paper are Nino Tabatadze (first author), Guangzhe Huang, Renee M. May and Anant Jain, all of Northwestern.
To read the article, please visit Northwestern News.
12 August 2015