"In a meta-analysis of 293 articles, behavioral, morphological, physiological, and molecular traits were monitored in male mice and females tested without regard to estrous cycle stage; variability was not significantly greater in females than males for any endpoint and was substantially greater in males for several traits. Group housing of mice increased variability in both males and females by 37%. Utilization of female mice in neuroscience research does not require monitoring of the estrous cycle...
A 2009 survey documented male bias in 8 disciplines, with ratios of male-only versus female-only studies ranging from 3.7:1 in physiology to 5:1 in pharmacology and neuroscience (Beery and Zucker, 2011).
Hughes (2007) noted that despite repeated attempts to draw attention to sex-dependent drug effects the vast majority of rodent researchers continue to use males exclusively in drug studies. This is problematic given adverse effects of various drugs are more common or severe in women than men (Rogers and Ballantyne, 2008). The tendency to ignore females typifies all types of research, from studies of cell lines to those of higher order behaviors, and everything in between (Beery and Zucker, 2011) and remains uncorrected in 2014...
A major impediment to reversing sex bias in rodent research is the widespread belief that the 4-day estrous cycle of rats and mice requires daily tracking of vaginal cytology, viewed as a time-consuming undertaking in experiments with females."
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