Women live on average seven years more than men.
The bad news is that they're more susceptible to a number of chronic diseases and more likely to experience illness or disability. So says Freda Lewis-Hall, M.D. who heads a women's health center for a pharmaceutical company. Pharmaceutical companies are targeting diseases that disproportionately afflict women. In addition, companies are studying more than 80 new medicines to combat heart disease, the leading killer of both men and women, with special attention to how drugs work in women. And pharmaceutical companies are doing gender-based research, looking at both the sameness and the differences between men and women.