Funding outcome

Kidney disease affects nearly one billion people worldwide and is a major cause of illness and health-care use, making the development of better treatments a pressing need. Before new treatments are tested in people, they are studied in laboratories using cells and animals. These early studies, called preclinical research, play a major role in deciding which therapies are developed, how drugs are tested, what doses are used, and which patients are included in trials. Across many areas of health research, these early studies have relied heavily on male cells and animals, while female representation has been lacking. This imbalance can hide important biological differences between sexes and may limit how well findings apply to everyone. In kidney disease, this concern is especially important, as females experience different disease patterns and responses to medications. However, we still don't know whether the early research that guides treatment development captures these differences or overlooks them by relying on male models. This project will examine how biological sex is included and reported in preclinical kidney studies published in leading nephrology journals over the past ten years. We will assess how often female and male models are used, whether studies analyze results separately by sex, and how researchers describe sex in their methods and discussions. Where relevant, we will assess whether authors explain why only one sex was studied and whether they discuss how this might affect how widely their results apply. This project will provide a clear representation of who is being studied in early kidney research and how sex is considered in study design and reporting. By tracking changes over the past decade, we will show whether representation of females is improving, unchanged, or declining. These findings can help guide better research standards and funding decisions, so that future kidney treatments are safer, more reliable, and effective for everyone.