Common Corpus No. 9
For all women, for life
Welcome back to Common Corpus, our weekly curation of the best evidence-based women’s health content designed to help you navigate, optimize, and advocate for your well-being at every stage of life.
This week, we cover a promising new treatment for preeclampsia, a proposed new policy approach to dealing with medical misogyny, pelvic floor health across the lifespan, and how climate change and droughts may increase the risk of violence for adolescent girls, and much more.
We hope you find this week’s resources insightful, useful, and empowering as you navigate your own health journey. If you’re enjoying Common Corpus and finding it useful, please share it with anyone else who might be interested.
And if you want to learn more about what Common Corpus is, and why we do what we do, please visit our About page.
News & Noteworthy
What’s making the news in women’s health
Can issuing fines for medical misogyny improve healthcare for women?
A newly unveiled plan by the UK’s health secretary would penalize hospitals for “medical misogyny”. But does this risk diverting crucial resources away from frontline care, and ultimately worsening the systemic failures that harm female patients?
There is a real crisis of systemic gender bias in healthcare, where women’s pain is dismissed and maternal care falls short. But, this article argues financial punishments will not address the root cultural and educational causes of medical misogyny.
Imposing fines on already financially strained health services effectively strips money away from essential patient care, staff training, and specialized women’s health clinics needed to improve outcomes. This is likely to impact the worst performing hospitals most, creating a vicious cycle of poor patient satisfaction scores, reduced funding, and therefore fewer resources to improve patient care.
The takeaway: While the notion of financial penalties for medical misogyny may appeal to a sense of injustice, such fines may inadvertently undercut healthcare institutions struggling to provide care. Ultimately, ensuring equitable treatment for women requires actively funding systemic cultural change and frontline resources, and prioritizing women’s health research, rather than simply fining hospitals into further dysfunction.
New dialysis-like treatment for preeclampsia
A new dialysis-like treatment may help safely extend pregnancies for women suffering from early severe preeclampsia.
The experimental device uses a process called extracorporeal apheresis to filter the mother’s blood to remove the toxic placental protein responsible for damaging blood vessels and driving life-threatening high blood pressure.
In an early-stage trial, this targeted therapy successfully stabilized maternal blood pressure, allowed the babies to continue developing normally, and extended pregnancies by an average of 10 extra days (more than double the duration seen in untreated patients).
The takeaway: This holds the potential to significantly shift the management of one of the most dangerous and historically untreatable pregnancy complications. By safely buying crucial extra time in the womb, this therapy could reduce the health risks associated with premature birth while protecting maternal lives.
The Latest Research
The latest in academic research in women’s health
New evidence and guidelines on testosterone therapy for women
A new article highlights that testosterone therapy provides physiological benefits across multiple organ systems for postmenopausal women, extending far beyond the traditional focus on simply boosting libido. Key findings of the study are that transdermal testosterone is preferred, and there is strong evidence to support improved sexual function. Interestingly, there are promising data that suggest testosterone might have a wider therapeutic role for women in terms of bone health, musculoskeletal strength, cognition, and bladder health, among others, although more research and evidence are needed before prescribing testosterone specifically for these conditions. This research highlights how testosterone should be part of the conversation about women’s health.
Listen & Learn
The latest in women’s health audio content worth your time
How to stop leaking, prolapse and pain
In this episode of The Woman's Handbook, specialized women’s health physiotherapists Monica Donaldson and Tamara Gerdis debunk pervasive myths surrounding pelvic floor dysfunction. A key takeaway: though symptoms like leaking, heaviness, and pain are common after childbirth or during menopause, they are not a "normal" consequence of aging and childbirth that women must simply accept. They caution against the blanket prescription of Kegels, explaining that for many women experiencing pelvic pain or dysfunction, blindly tightening the muscles can actually worsen symptoms. Instead, they highlight highly effective, non-surgical interventions (ranging from targeted physical therapy to specialized pessaries) that can safely address everything from prolapse to painful intercourse. This episode is wide-ranging, taking women through the changes to the pelvic floor over the life-course, and the treatments available to what are very common but not normal pelvic floor conditions.
The Global Perspective
Women’s health around the world
The link between climate change and violence against adolescent girls
A recent study using data from Southern Africa reveals that severe drought exposure is associated with an elevated risk of violence, particularly for adolescent girls, who face up to double the overall risk of violence and a 46% increase in sexual violence by non-partners. This pattern may be explained by worsening household financial circumstances where water scarcity destroys agricultural livelihoods, which may also increase the likelihood of early marriage and forced migration, and by the need to travel longer distances to secure basic resources like water and firewood, a burden largely borne by young women. This highlights the need to integrate violence prevention and gender-sensitive approaches to climate resilience strategies.
Common Interest
Quick hits that we found interesting, thought-provoking, or useful this week
This brief history of pubic hair offers a fascinating look at shifting trends over the centuries and what they suggested about wealth and health. LINK
Hollywood would rather cast a talking animal or a guy named Chris than a woman over 60. LINK