Speaker 1: Hi. This is Malayan Vervier and this is Kim Azarelli.
Speaker 1: We are co authors of the book Fast Forward, How
Speaker 1: Women Can Achieve Power and Purpose. And you're listening to
Speaker 1: Seneca Women Conversations on Power and Purpose, brought to you
Speaker 1: by the Seneca Women Podcast Network and I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Women are at the epicenter of a major health crisis,
Speaker 1: Alzheimer's disease. You may be surprised, as I was, to
Speaker 1: learn that two out of three new Alzheimer's patients are women,
Speaker 1: and women bear a double burden, comprising more than six
Speaker 1: of Alzheimer's and dementia caregivers. Yet, the outsized impact of
Speaker 1: Alzheimer's and other neurological diseases on women remains under examined,
Speaker 1: and women scientists continue to be underrepresented and underfunded. Putting
Speaker 1: a women's lens on this disease is essential if we
Speaker 1: want to improve the lives of both women and men.
Speaker 1: I sat down at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with
Speaker 1: Dr Jane Salomon of Wild Cornell and Dr Fannie Allahi
Speaker 1: of the UCSF Memory and Aging Center. These two scientists
Speaker 1: are working tirelessly to make huge breakthroughs in women's health.
Speaker 1: Listen to our conversation to learn why adding more women
Speaker 1: to medical research is urgent for everyone, what's at stake
Speaker 1: if we don't, and the empirical reason why you just
Speaker 1: might want your next doctor to be a woman, and
Speaker 1: stick around after the conversation for our top takeaways. So
Speaker 1: I want to welcome Dr Jane Sollman, Associate Dean at
Speaker 1: wild Cornell and Professor of Medicine. You're going to hear
Speaker 1: why we're so honored to have her today, and of
Speaker 1: course Dr Fannie Allahy, m D, pH d and Assistant
Speaker 1: Professor at UCSF. Thank you both for being here. So
Speaker 1: we a lot today about women in tech and girls
Speaker 1: in tech, and we thought it was really important to
Speaker 1: talk to women scientists who have been at the forefront
Speaker 1: and are at the forefront of solving some of the
Speaker 1: most important issues for women's health. So Jane, let's start
Speaker 1: with you. Uh, tell us a little about your work
Speaker 1: in lupus and how and what you discovered about lupas
Speaker 1: and pregnancy. Lupas is a disease where the immune system,
Speaker 1: which really evolved to protect us against microbes, turns against
Speaker 1: the body and attacks organs and nent of patients with
Speaker 1: lupus or women, and most women developed disease in their twenties.
Speaker 1: These girls or young women were told never to become
Speaker 1: pregnant because they or their babies could die, and that
Speaker 1: guidance was really based on limited information. So I spent
Speaker 1: a good deal of my career trying to determine whether
Speaker 1: or not this was true for all lupas patients. My
Speaker 1: team studied hundreds of women with lupus, and what we
Speaker 1: learned was the pregnant see complications severe ones in patients
Speaker 1: are extremely uncommon, and we could identify the limited subset
Speaker 1: of patients who would have these complications. We also discovered
Speaker 1: the biology around pregnancy complications in lupus, and we're now
Speaker 1: having a promising treatment trial funded by the NIH to
Speaker 1: see if we can protect these women from complications. And
Speaker 1: what's particularly interesting is the possibility that what we're going
Speaker 1: to learn from this trial applies to all women, not
Speaker 1: just women with lupus. There are very there's no treatments
Speaker 1: for preclamsy of toxinia pregnancy, but we may be able
Speaker 1: to develop a treatment. Kind of the cost of morbidity
Speaker 1: in pregnancy is expensive to the society and to the family,
Speaker 1: and there's very little research on diseases of pregnancy, and
Speaker 1: that's really what I've committed my career to and hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll be able to change it. Thank you. Not Fanny.
Speaker 1: We saw these incredible statistics about UM women in Alzheimer's
Speaker 1: and I've been very taken by the numbers. UM, So
Speaker 1: can you tell us, well, obviously you study the conditions
Speaker 1: that could lead to a cure for Alzheimer's, and I'm
Speaker 1: amazed by your research. Why is this also a women's
Speaker 1: issue and given your experience, why is it important to
Speaker 1: look at health the lens of women and in particular
Speaker 1: women's scientists. Thank you, Kim. I think the statistics are
Speaker 1: really striking. It's um. Alzheimer's and your degenative disorders are
Speaker 1: humanities issue and especially women's issue, and numbers don't lie
Speaker 1: and they're surprising, and so I really think that we
Speaker 1: have to get at the route causes and what we
Speaker 1: will discover relating to women's risk of increased risk of
Speaker 1: Alzheimer's could potentially actually translate to all sorts of Alzheimer's.
Speaker 1: So the first step is to have a precision medicine
Speaker 1: approach to understand what it is about a human being
Speaker 1: that predisposes them to new generation. What are the specific
Speaker 1: factors as opposed to just blanket age or gender, sex, ethnicity.
Speaker 1: And so we're working on bio markers. You know, we're
Speaker 1: looking at people's retina, we're looking at their brain structures,
Speaker 1: were taking blood and looking at proteins and urn a
Speaker 1: different molecules in their blood. To to have a more
Speaker 1: to stop guessing and to have a more precise idea
Speaker 1: of risk um and and and the history um of
Speaker 1: of change in a human being that then predisposes them.
Speaker 1: One of one of the facts, UM, is that Alzheimer's
Speaker 1: really starts decades before it actually presents in the clinic.
Speaker 1: And if we stand a chance, it ought to be early.
Speaker 1: And so we need to intervene early, and we need
Speaker 1: to detect early in order to intervene early. I was
Speaker 1: taken um by UM some of the research point and
Speaker 1: what you told me about sort of hormones and this
Speaker 1: sort of failure to look at the disease through the
Speaker 1: lens of women in this when the statistics are staggering.
Speaker 1: Can you just tell us a little bit about UM. So,
Speaker 1: as a clinician scientist, I do science and I also
Speaker 1: see patients, and I think the scientists and me is
Speaker 1: driven by data, and the clinician has given me the
Speaker 1: privilege to observe and to interact with women. Um. So
Speaker 1: one of the most striking um occurrences has been seeing
Speaker 1: perimenopausal women walk into my clinic and report cognitive changes
Speaker 1: that have been dismissed by so many other clinicians before me.
Speaker 1: And maybe the first time I thought, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: this is subjective. The second time, it's harder to think that.
Speaker 1: The third and the fourth, and and the problem is
Speaker 1: that our tests are not sensitive enough to detect those changes,
Speaker 1: and so there are no objective measures to say that
Speaker 1: your address. We just have to go and believe them
Speaker 1: and then set up experiments and test these hypotheses. So
Speaker 1: that's what I want to do in the future, and
Speaker 1: really dig into these early quote unquote subjective changes that
Speaker 1: women are reporting and tried to find objective ways to
Speaker 1: measure these in a sensitive manner. Jane, you know one
Speaker 1: of the statistics that I had read which I found
Speaker 1: was amazing. Maybe you got some of you read it
Speaker 1: in New York Times recently. It says that actually patients there,
Speaker 1: I think they studied uh in the fifty eight thousand,
Speaker 1: fifty eight thousand patients in emergency rooms, and they found
Speaker 1: that patients who were seen by women doctors actually had
Speaker 1: better survival rates. You know, this is the reason to
Speaker 1: really poor women in science, just for a selfish reason.
Speaker 1: But Jane, look, can we talk about this because you
Speaker 1: are the highest ranking one of the highest ranking scientists
Speaker 1: frankly at wild Cornell. You've been a true leader in
Speaker 1: this field. I was really taken when we first met
Speaker 1: about how you made the business case for your research,
Speaker 1: and similar to what Fatty was just saying about how
Speaker 1: she's trying to make the case right now for more
Speaker 1: funding because we know that women in Alzheimer's chronically underfunded.
Speaker 1: Women's health it's chronically underfunded. You've been a true leader
Speaker 1: in this field. You have been able to make that
Speaker 1: case um and you've also been able to support other
Speaker 1: women's scientists. But yet we're still facing this chronic gap
Speaker 1: in the senior ranks of the scientific community. And why
Speaker 1: is that? And what do you see? You know, I
Speaker 1: think women see medicine differently. You heard that from Fanny.
Speaker 1: Women ask questions differently, they analyzed data differently, and they
Speaker 1: asked different questions. In the nineteen eighties, the only mention
Speaker 1: of women's heart disease in a major society meeting of
Speaker 1: cardiologists was how to deal with your husband's heart attack? Well,
Speaker 1: we we've become we we've come really a long way.
Speaker 1: Yeah so so so I think you know, we've come
Speaker 1: a long way, but um, we have a long way
Speaker 1: to go. Uh. When I was a medical student, there
Speaker 1: were very few women. There were almost no women faculty. Um.
Speaker 1: And I was introduced to a pay a little I
Speaker 1: took care of a ten year old boy, and I
Speaker 1: was introduced to his mother as the doctor who's a nurse. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I don't think that was rare uh in those days.
Speaker 1: And I think we we we still see happens. We
Speaker 1: still we still see that sometimes. And so now of
Speaker 1: medical students, i'd say for the past twenty years or women,
Speaker 1: and as of seventeen in American medical schools, of the
Speaker 1: assistant professors or women, but when you start working your
Speaker 1: way up associate professors, it's only thirty six percent, and
Speaker 1: full professors it is only this isn't really a pipeline issue.
Speaker 1: As you've heard before, It takes longer for women to
Speaker 1: be promoted, and they're much less likely to be put
Speaker 1: up by their cheers for promotion than men in their departments.
Speaker 1: It's an issue that academic medicine recognizes and we're trying
Speaker 1: to address. But it's really similar to what you see
Speaker 1: uh in all fields. In order to get the right
Speaker 1: multidimensional look at basic and clinical questions, you have to
Speaker 1: have women physicians. They listen better. Then you need women mentors,
Speaker 1: women leaders to inspire other women to follow you so
Speaker 1: that women's diseases can be addressed and the sensitivity that
Speaker 1: Kim talked about and people will live longer if their
Speaker 1: docs or women I mean, if that not a simple
Speaker 1: business case coming so, so if any we talked about
Speaker 1: this as well, about why this lens of women makes
Speaker 1: a difference, why questions haven't been raised in the past,
Speaker 1: and you mentioned to me that you know, we probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't be lagging as far behind maybe if we'd ask
Speaker 1: these questions sooner. And I think that you know your
Speaker 1: research is showing some pretty remarkable opportunities, but what's the
Speaker 1: problem and why are we still seeing this lag there?
Speaker 1: So I think the Citus it's that Jane Um mentioned
Speaker 1: with respect to women advancing in their career in science
Speaker 1: and medicine are really striking, and we need to learn
Speaker 1: from other industries and get at the root causes. Why
Speaker 1: is it that that's occurring? I feel that UM women
Speaker 1: are given opportunities, but then on a day to day basis,
Speaker 1: maybe the support is not there. And obviously the role
Speaker 1: models are far and fewer in between than men because
Speaker 1: it's a new, relatively new field for a women UM.
Speaker 1: And why are we lagging behind on discoveries that really
Speaker 1: specifically to women's conditions is probably also because in medicine
Speaker 1: you need curiosity and intellectual drive, but at the end
Speaker 1: of it you also need passion because it's a long road,
Speaker 1: it's difficult, there are lots of failures, and you need
Speaker 1: to have that sort of internal stimulus that constantly drives
Speaker 1: you UM. You need to to be touched by the question,
Speaker 1: and I can't say that men are not touched by
Speaker 1: women's questions, but it's probably it's more probable that women
Speaker 1: will be UM. And so we really need, just for
Speaker 1: the sake of diversity of questions and importance of the questions,
Speaker 1: that I asked more women UM trained UM and credential
Speaker 1: to do that well and I think, uh again, I've
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time with these women over the
Speaker 1: last time preparing for this, and and Jane has been
Speaker 1: a mentor to so many and she's told us so
Speaker 1: much about what she does to mentor women. Um and
Speaker 1: what we've decided to try to do together this year
Speaker 1: is to try to focus a little bit more on
Speaker 1: women's scientists. I think that women's science is chronically underfunded.
Speaker 1: I've understood this now from both of them, and I
Speaker 1: think you know what Fanny's work is doing to really
Speaker 1: prevent this epidemic. Though. If there is the possibility of
Speaker 1: a cure, if there is the possibility of ending PROCLAIMSIA
Speaker 1: or getting more research about this, we need to do it.
Speaker 1: But it's underfunded. So I would ask all of you
Speaker 1: again on this connect point concept, to go home to
Speaker 1: think about your institutions, your organization, sations, the foundations you're
Speaker 1: involved with, and let's see if we can't get some
Speaker 1: of the science funded. Thank you both than stay tuned
Speaker 1: for our takeaways after this break. That was truly an
Speaker 1: enlightening conversation. So many families are touched by Alzheimer's and
Speaker 1: I was amazed to learn from Dr Allahi that just
Speaker 1: like breast cancer, early detection is within reach and could
Speaker 1: save lives if women scientists and their research could just
Speaker 1: get the support they need. To learn more about Dr
Speaker 1: allah He's work at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center
Speaker 1: and how to support the women in Alzheimer's Research Fund,
Speaker 1: go to Seneca Women dot com, and to learn about
Speaker 1: Dr Jane Solomon's work on lupus, go to wild Doc
Speaker 1: Cornell dot e du Our top takeaways. First, when it
Speaker 1: comes to medical conditions, we need to recognize that women's
Speaker 1: biology matters too. Women may have different symptoms, different reactions
Speaker 1: to medication, and different responses to treatment than men do.
Speaker 1: We need to ensure that the medical community acknowledges these
Speaker 1: differences so that women are properly diagnosed and treated. Second,
Speaker 1: it's time to demand that women are equally represented in
Speaker 1: clinical trials and that research was taken to account sex
Speaker 1: and gender differences. Will know more about human health when
Speaker 1: women's health and disease risk are better understood. Finally, it's
Speaker 1: imperative that more funding and support flow to women's scientists
Speaker 1: and clinicians. A women's lens matters when you have diverse
Speaker 1: scientists who get more innovation, as well as studies with
Speaker 1: a broader perspective and a more thorough understanding of patients.
Speaker 1: By failing to support women's scientists, we are literally holding
Speaker 1: back innovation and the chance to find cures for disease
Speaker 1: and improve health for everyone. For me, supporting women's scientists
Speaker 1: may be one of the most important steps we can
Speaker 1: take right now out in advancing women and improving lives.
Speaker 1: Let's each try to spread the word and make a
Speaker 1: contribution in any way we can. Together, we can do this.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Seneca Women Conversations on Power and Purpose,
Speaker 1: brought to you by the Seneca Women podcast Network and
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio with support from founding partner PNG. Listen
Speaker 1: to Seneca Women Conversations on Power and Purpose on the
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts, and please support this podcast by telling your friends, subscribing,
Speaker 1: and rating us. For more information on Seneca Women, follow
Speaker 1: us on social media, visit our website Seneca Women dot com,
Speaker 1: and check out the Seneca Women app free in the
Speaker 1: app Store. Have a great day.