Department of Sport and Health Sciences, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany; Translational Sensory & Circadian Neuroscience, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany; Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick, Warwick, United Kingdom; Hepatobiliary Center, Hospital Paul Brousse (AP-HP), Villejuif, France; UPR Chronotherapy, Cancer and Transplantation, Medical School, Paris-Saclay University, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
Sleep and Circadian Research Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, United States; School of Psychological Sciences and Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, Monash University, Clayton, Australia
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick, Warwick, United Kingdom
Growing evidence shows that sex differences impact many facets of human biology. Here we review and discuss the impact of sex on human circadian and sleep physiology, and we uncover a data gap in the field investigating the non-visual effects of light in humans. A virtual workshop on the biomedical implications of sex differences in sleep and circadian physiology led to the following imperatives for future research: i) design research to be inclusive and accessible; ii) implement recruitment strategies that lead to a sex-balanced sample; iii) use data visualization to grasp the effect of sex; iv) implement statistical analyses that include sex as a factor and/or perform group analyses by sex, where possible; v) make participant-level data open and available to facilitate future meta-analytic efforts.
