Gender effect on clinical features and drug treatment response in social anxiety disorder (social phobia)

Objective. To investigate differences concerning clinical and treatment response features in male and female patients with social anxiety disorder (SOAD). Method. Male (n=41) and female patients (n=21) with SOAD were compared with regard to age and mode of onset; SOAD subtype; symptom severity; presence of comorbid psychiatric conditions; and response after drug treatment. The χ2-test was used for comparisons between categorical variables and Student's t-test for continuous variables. The adopted level of statistic significance was 5%. Results. Male patients had a higher mean age (t= -2.9; df =42; P=0.006), more severe initial symptoms (t =-2.6; df =37.4; P =0.01) and, more often, more than one comorbid psychiatric condition (χ2=10.98; df =1; P =0.001). Alcohol abuse was more frequent in men (χ2=7.62; df =1; P =0.006). With regard to treatment response, male patients displayed greater reductions in the severity of their baseline symptoms. Patients with SOAD were randomly selected from both samples in order to generate subgroups of 18 male and 18 female age-matched patients. Despite controlling for age, we still found that men exhibited a trend toward greater severity of symptoms at baseline than women with SOAD (t =-1.8; df =33.1; P =0.07). Conclusion. The findings suggest differences concerning initial severity and comorbidity rates between men and women suffering from SOAD.