Women’s health is being put at risk because researchers have ignored gender differences in the brain out of fear of being labelled sexist, scientists have claimed.

Male and female brains can respond differently to drugs for conditions such as stroke, but for years neuroscientists have feared being “a pariah in the eyes of the neuroscience mainstream” if they highlighted the difference, according to a guest editor of a special edition of the Journal of Neuroscience Research.

Most early-stage research in neuroscience concentrates on men’s brains and assumes that the results can be generalised to women. This month the journal published an edition saying that there was clear evidence that gender “matters fundamentally, powerfully, and pervasively” and that the legacy of presuming otherwise has meant