“Women’s Health – Assessing the Need for a Targeted and Specialized Approach
Summary
Many of the diseases and conditions that affect mainly women are interlinked with similar root causes; however, placing all of the pieces of the puzzle together to ensure a cohesive management strategy remains a challenge.
Women’s Health is a collection of multi-factorial conditions and diseases that solely affect or are more prevalent in females. Many can have a serious impact on women’s overall long-term health and quality of life. There are a number of causes of Women’s Health diseases, ranging from hormonal fluctuations associated with specific points in a woman’s life through to psychological issues underpinning certain lifestyle disorders. As these causes and the courses and consequences of these diseases become better understood, the importance of targeted, specific treatment is increasingly being recognized, with some female-specific interventions now being investigated. In addition, it is becoming increasingly crucial to understand and act on the interaction between different diseases that primarily affect women, in order to ensure the most effective treatment approaches.
Female cancers, particularly breast and cervical, have led the way in preventive and therapeutic approaches, creating new paths for the management of other cancers and rendering some previously highly terminal cancers manageable diseases. The advent of personalized therapy for HER2-positive breast cancer was enabled through the identification of the HER2 gene and development of targeted drugs, such as Herceptin (trastuzumab) and Tyverb (lapatinib), and the prevention of cancer through vaccination has become the norm for cervical cancer. However, the same cannot be said for other female cancers, where, in spite of identification of gene mutations, targeted therapy is still in its infancy.
Despite significant advances in Women’s Health, there are still a number of unmet needs, particularly...