194 Revealing the Sex Data Gap in Sleep and Chronobiology Research: A Systematic Review

• Published in: Sleep (New York, N.Y.) N.Y.), 2021-05, Vol.44 (Supplement_2), p.A78-A78
• Main Authors: Tir, Selma, Spitschan, Manuel
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Sleep; Systematic review; Variables
• ISSN: 0161-8105; 1550-9109
• DOI: 10.1093/sleep/zsab072.193

Introduction Many aspects of sleep and circadian physiology appear to be sensitive to characteristics of the studied population, most notably sex. While recent research robustly highlights the importance of considering participant-level demographic information, it is not clear to what extent this information is available in the large body of already published literature. In this systematic review, we evaluated the study sample characteristics in the published sleep and chronobiology research over the past 40 years. Methods Articles published between 1979 and 2019 (odd years) in the top eight sleep and chronobiology journals, identified by their five-year Impact Factor, were found through MEDLINE. 6,777 articles were initially included for screening. Inclusion requirements included conducting original research, reporting human data, and recruiting volunteers. The reporting of sample size, age, sex, gender, ethnicity, level of education, socio-economic status, and profession of the study population was scored binarily (0 = not reported), and any reported aggregate summary statistics for these variables were recorded. Funding source, geographical location and clinical focus of the article were examined, as well as whether data were analyzed including any of the demographic variables as covariates. Results ~75% of screened articles met inclusion criteria. While >90% of studies reported age or sex, all other variables were reported in