Salute e lavoro in un’ottica di genere [Health and work in a gender perspective.]

A literature review was performed to highlight which work-related diseases express sex/gender differences in health outcomes and focus the main limits of studies in this field. The research, carried out on PubMed by specific search string, identified 4828 articles (1997-2017 period) of which 381 are eligible for review (4-22%, depending on the disease). Among them, 68% reported sex/gender differences in health outcomes, which in most cases appear to be due to different exposure and/or work segregation rather than to biological differences. However, few studies place this assessment among the research goals and results are almost never discussed and hypothesis are seldom formulated about any observed differences. It seems necessary to use research methodologies and study design that can detect and explain the described complexity and useful in defining appropriate preventive strategies.