Research conducted at the Canadian Light Source on the University of Saskatchewan campus shows men and women develop heart disease differently.

Marta Cerutti, a scientist at McGill University used one of the beam-lines to analyze damaged heart valves and discovered that the type of minerals was different between the sexes. It was an unexpected result. Plus, calcification in women happens more slowly, so there would be fewer minerals in the calcification than there are in men, even if the severity of disease is the same.

Cerutti hopes a test can be developed to specifically target these different minerals for a better diagnosis and the way to dissolve the minerals may be different as well. She believes gender diversity is becoming more of a trend in health research and this study proves the importance of that.

Cerutti explains that whenever you develop a cure, if you don’t have enough samples that represent different sections of the population, you will never know if the side effects or the efficacy will be the same.