In recent decades there has been an increasing recognition of the need to account for sex and gender in biology and medicine, in order to develop a more comprehensive understanding of biological phenomena and to address gaps in medical knowledge that have arisen due to a generally masculine bias in research. We have noted that as basic experimental biomedical researchers, we face unique challenges to the incorporation of sex and gender in our work, and that these have remained largely unarticulated, misunderstood, and unaddressed in the literature. Here, we describe some of the specific challenges to the incorporation of sex and gender considerations in research involving cell cultures and laboratory animals. In our view, the mainstreaming of sex and gender considerations in basic biomedical research depends on an approach that will allow scientists to address these issues in ways that do not undermine our ability to pursue our fundamental scientific interests. To that end, we suggest a number of strategies that allow basic experimental researchers to feasibly and meaningfully take sex and gender into account in their work.

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Exercise interventions with or without educational interventions that can be applied in the workplace have the potential to prevent LBP.

This study aimed at investigating gender difference in the coordination of the subdivisions of the trapezius muscle during a repetitive box-folding movement task. Twenty-two healthy volunteers (11 males and 11 females) performed the repetitive box-folding task for 34 min. During the task, perceived exertion and surface electromyographic (EMG) signals from the upper, middle, and lower trapezius subdivisions were recorded. Absolute and normalised root mean square (RMS) values as well as normalised mutual information (NMI) values were calculated to assess, respectively, activation levels within muscle subdivisions and functional connectivity among subdivisions. Females compared with males were characterised by higher normalised RMS values in the upper trapezius (P < 0.05) and higher NMI values within the upper-middle subdivision pair (P < 0.05) during repetitive box-folding. The elevated normalised level of activation of the upper trapezius as well as the enhanced functional connectivity among upper-middle trapezius subdivisions underlined that females adopted a different motor strategy than males did during a dynamic repetitive task. Such differences within and among muscle subdivisions may not be a favourable trait and could partly contribute to the higher prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders reported in females.