Medicines and Health Solutions for a Healthier Life – Every Day

Simply because of their ability to have children, women are affected by different diseases than men. Later in their lives, they go through a profound change in hormone balance due to menopause, which affects the entire female physique and psyche. For this fundamental reason, women have always needed specialists and special therapies.

However, women not only have their “own” diseases per se – in fact, women present with specific symptoms and prognoses in disease that are not gender-specific. One example is that of a heart attack, in which it has been observed that women present with atypical symptoms that result in the diagnosis being made rarely or very late. Not knowing these differences can have fatal consequences.

Due to their different physical constitution and their specific metabolism, drug interventions in particular must be geared toward women more strongly than previously. Fortunately, this realization has been increasingly gaining acceptance for many years now, both in the realm of drug research and in everyday medical care.

For example, women eat a more balanced diet, but tend to exercise less and also work predominantly in other professions than men. These different working and living conditions are currently coming increasingly into the focus of medical science – again with the goal of providing women with better healthcare than before.

Women have a central role in healthcare: They are the level and fulcrum when it comes to maintaining awareness about the health of children, partners, and parents. Above all, they are the ones who pay attention to their loved ones’ symptoms, keep track of preventive care appointments and manage the family’s overall health. They step into the role of “family managers” in a real way, but at the same time they have a greater awareness of the need for preventive healthcare. This can be considered to be a gender-specific advantage that has immense benefit in industrialized countries, and can even be necessary for survival in developing countries.

For the women themselves, however, this important additional social function also contributes to a generally higher stress level. The fact that responsibility can result in a health-averse burden must be taken into account, especially in times of a global pandemic. This is because, once again, it is primarily women who, as family managers, are the masters of enormous organizational challenges, and not infrequently shoulder most of the burden of the crisis.

Biosimilars are less expensive alternatives to biologics, i.e. genetically engineered drugs that often significantly expand the range of treatment options, especially for serious diseases. While the drugs commonly used are made up of relatively simple molecular structures, biologics consist of proteins that have a complex structure and are produced with great effort through living organisms such as yeasts or bacteria.

Biosimilars were developed with the goal of making these important new treatments more widely available. According to an expert report by the Winterthur Institute for Health Economics (WIG), the increased use of biosimilars in Switzerland could significantly reduce drug costs for national health insurance. The potential savings are estimated to be up to 100 million Swiss francs over three years for six of the most important active ingredients.[1]

[1] Zürcher Hochschule Für Angewandte Wissenschaften – 200304-biosimilars-in-der-schweiz.pdf (zhaw.ch) Retrieved 05/09/2023

Generics and biosimilars are first and foremost alternatives to the drugs that were initially developed. While the active ingredients of a generic product are identical to those of the reference product to the greatest possible extent, biosimilars are similar but not identical. The reason is that they are alternatives to active ingredients, produced from living organisms. That is why they also go through a different approval process, to show that they have no clinically relevant deviations from the reference product in terms of safety, purity, and efficacy. The purpose of this trial is to prove that the effect of the biosimilar is comparable to the effect of the reference product.