Editorial: Women in environmental physiology 2022

The United Nations has declared gender equality and science as essential for humanity to reach its goals for sustainable development.Still, women account for only 1/3 of the worlds' researchers and 1/8 of the members of national science academies (Unesco, 2021).Also, longstanding underrepresentation of female populations as study participants in biology, physiology and medicine in extreme environmental conditions limits our knowledge of mechanisms and treatments important for women's' health (Nowogrodzki, 2017).The Women in Environmental Physiology Research Topic contains a collection of scientific papers that highlight work led by women, to narrow the gender gap and invite us to break archaic paradigms that indicate that it is more difficult to study women.The papers address responses and performance at high altitude, in aeronautics, space, and Mars-like conditions, including physical and cognitive function and stress in hypobaric hypoxia, microgravity and in isolated and confined environments.Most of the papers present studies of women's responses to challenging environments.In a study of women's mood at high altitude, Alcantara-Zapata et al. examined a possible role of serotonin-dependent signal transduction via the tryptophan-melatonin axis in responses to hypobaric hypoxia.Given that women have lower peripheral serotonin and higher prevalence of anxiety and depression at sea level than men and that altitude exacerbates the risk of mood disorders, the authors discussed sexual dimorphism of serotonin availability in mood regulation at high altitude.They argued that the tradeoff between metabolic demands of thermoregulation and neural circuitry repair, both of which involve the tryptophan-melatonin axis, may leave women at higher risk than men.Their findings support monitoring of women's hormone cycles and suggest a role for trials of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors to protect their health, wellbeing, and safety of women sojourning at high altitude.These points should be considered especially now that job offers for women in at high altitude mining are increasing.Furter on the theme of sex-specific responses to hypoxia, Páez et al. studied lactate production and pulmonary ventilation during anaerobic sprint tests at sea level and high altitude, comparing the outcomes for young women and men.They found that while lactate levels did not significantly differ between women and men for tests performed at sea level, women experienced a larger increase in lactate in the first 24 h at high altitude.Women's ventilatory response decreased more than that of men, causing higher work of breathing.They results encourage further investigation into sexual dimorphism of fatigue-induced

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