TUESDAY, Oct. 13, 2026 (HealthDay News) -- Compared with men, women with autoimmune disease are more likely to have longer delays to diagnosis and to have misdiagnoses, according to a study published online Oct. 12 in eClinicalMedicine.
Melanie Sloan, Ph.D., from Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, and colleagues conducted a cross-sectional international study to capture and compare elements of autoimmune disease diagnosis not routinely captured in medical records.
The study included 6,607 participants with autoimmune diseases (91.2 percent female; 87.8 percent White). The researchers found that compared with men, women were significantly more likely to report longer delays from symptom onset to diagnosis and more visits to health care providers; in addition, more reported that their autoimmune disease had been attributed to psychiatric (43.3 versus 32.7 percent) and psychosomatic causes (33.9 versus 21.5 percent). More men reported being misdiagnosed with another physical disease than women (47.6 versus 43.5 percent), but the difference was not statistically significant. Disease group was a significant predictor of perceived psychiatric and psychosomatic misdiagnoses. Women had significantly higher odds of reporting mental health-related and psychosomatic misdiagnoses than men, after adjustment for disease group only (odds ratios, 1.56 and 1.87, respectively). Women had significantly higher odds of psychiatric and psychosomatic misdiagnoses after adjustment for age, disease group, continent, and household financial situation (odds ratios, 1.46 and 1.74, respectively).
"Our findings highlight that psychological or mental health explanations can be given too soon," Sloan said in a statement. "This is true for both sexes, but our study suggests that females may be particularly vulnerable to these types of misdiagnoses."
Two authors disclosed ties to the biopharmaceutical industry.
