‘Sometimes it's hard to be a woman’ sang Dolly Parton, and this applies in relation to health as in many other areas. While it is true that women, in general, live longer than men, there remain many important areas of health where women suffer earlier and more severe disease than men, with poorer outcomes as a consequence. Gender and sex differences have significant impacts on health, particularly in developing countries where social and economic challenges mean that women often have particular difficulty in accessing high-quality healthcare. In addition, there are specific diseases and illnesses associated with being a woman which present specific challenges for health care and disease prevention.
It was against this background that a decision was made to focus the 14th Bergmeyer Conference, held from 3–5 March 2014, on the topic of Women's Health. This issue of the Scandinavian Journal of Clinical & Laboratory Investigation contains papers based on the presentations which were given at the Conference. It includes discussion of pregnancy, fertility and the major female cancers, but also highlights some of the gender specific challenges which are encountered in other areas of medicine, such as hepatology and infectious disease. In part these challenges result from the different physical manifestations of disease, and in part from differences in how women access the healthcare system in different settings and how healthcare professionals respond to their needs.
The Bergmeyer Conference is named after and dedicated to Professor Hans-Ulrich Bergmeyer to honour his outstanding achievements in biochemistry and the area of standardization. The conference is financially sponsored by Roche Diagnostics in the form of an unrestricted educational grant, and the topic is chosen and the programme put together by the Scientific Division of the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (IFCC).
The participants in this conference came from a wide range of professional backgrounds, including research scientists, hospital scientists, clinical laboratory scientists and clinicians. The majority of the speakers and attendees at the conference were, appropriately, female. The faculty brought together consisted of many of the world's leading experts on Women's Health who gave state-of-the-art presentations on relevant topics. Almost all speakers at the conference have provided papers for this issue of the journal, and we are grateful for their contributions. Together, they provide a valuable overview of the major contemporary medical and laboratory challenges in the area of Women's Health.
As for all of the previous Conferences, Anders Kallner again took over the main responsibility of editing these proceedings. Maurizio Ferrari and Janet Smith summarized discussions and put them in their proper context. Paola Bramati at the IFCC office supported the organization of the scientific aspects of the Conference. Last but not least, Joe Passarelli and his staff at Roche Diagnostics carried the burden of organizing the Conference in Eibsee, Germany, facilitating an outstanding meeting. We are grateful to them all.
Finally, a reminder of the topics of the previous Bergmeyer Conferences:
| 1988 | Principles of assays in medical sciences | ||||
| 1989 | Laboratory measurements in lipid disorders | ||||
| 1990 | Immunoassay standardization | ||||
| 1992 | Proposals for two immunomethod reference systems: cortisol and human chorionic gonadotropin | ||||
| 1994 | Tumor markers | ||||
| 1996 | Biochemical markers of bone diseases | ||||
| 1999 | Markers of cardiac damage | ||||
| 2001 | Biochemical markers for autoimmune diseases | ||||
| 2003 | Nucleic acid markers for bacterial and viral infections in intensive care and immunocompromised patients | ||||
| 2005 | Diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular disease | ||||
| 2008 | Markers of kidney disease | ||||
| 2010 | Novel biomarkers: from discovery to clinical application | ||||
| 2012 | Vitamin D in health and disease | ||||
| 2014 | Women's health | ||||