Vishwanath Upadhyay ¹ Rishabh Gangwar ² Gabrielle Landry Chappuis ³ Mikashmi Kohli ^3*

• ¹ Institute of Molecular Medicine, Jamia Hamdard University, New Delhi, Delhi, India
• ² Indian Council of Medical Research-National Institute of Malaria Research, New Delhi, India
• ³ FIND, Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

Background: Sex and gender can affect all aspects of health-related behaviour, yet there is limited information on how they influence diagnosis of any health condition. This scoping review examined the extent to which sex- and gender-disaggregated data on diagnostics are available for five tracer conditions: tuberculosis, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), diabetes, malaria, and schistosomiasis. Methods: Publications were searched between 2000 and 2022 on PubMed and Google Scholar and screened for relevance. Extracted data were analysed using descriptive quantitative and qualitative approaches. Results: We identified 29 relevant articles for tuberculosis, four for diabetes, six for schistosomiasis, eight for COVID-19, and three for malaria. For tuberculosis, most studies looked at gender-based barriers to diagnosis and disparities in health-seeking behaviours that predominantly affected women. For diabetes, studies noted that women had lower odds of being screened for prediabetes and potentially lower quality of care versus men. For schistosomiasis, studies suggested lower sensitivity diagnostic methods among women than men and low awareness of the disease. Studies suggest that women are less likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19 in certain settings. Studies on malaria reported that women show different health-seeking behaviours to men. Conclusions: This scoping review highlights a concerning lack of sex- and gender-disaggregated data on diagnostics. Consequently, further work is required to develop and implement an appropriate framework to assess gender and sex-related data around testing and diagnosis.