Gender disparities in neuropsychological assessment research in drug abuse populations: A systematic review

Abstract

Objective: To systematically review the literature on the neurocognitive effects of drug use to determine if there are significant gender differences. Methods: In April 2023, we conducted a broad search in MEDLINE (via PubMed), PsycINFO, and Embase for original research studies that used objective neuropsychological assessment to evaluate neurocognition in persons with drug use. Data extraction was performed in a masked, duplicate fashion. Results: Our initial search returned 22,430 records, of which 273 articles were included in our analysis. We found significant underrepresentation of women as participants in the studies. Twenty-one percent of studies had exclusively male participants; when women were included, they averaged only 23% of the sample. Only 49 studies sufficiently documented an analysis of their results by gender; due to the heterogeneity in study characteristics, no conclusions about cognitive differences between women and men could be made. Conclusions: Women are significantly underrepresented in the research on cognition in drug use. Increased efforts to include more women participants and consistent analysis and reporting of data for potential gender differences will be required to close this gap in knowledge, which may lead to improved substance abuse treatment approaches for women.

Keywords:

• Neurocognitive functioning
• substance use disorder
• illicit drugs
• disparities
• women
• review
• systematic review

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Study materials are available on Open Science Framework: DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/M3K9S.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.