Doctors know that women are more likely than men to have depression, anxiety or an eating disorder, while men are at higher risk of Parkinson's disease, the BBC is reporting.

Now scientists say post-mortem and brain imaging studies show that male and female brains are physically different and are even suggesting future disease cures may be "gender-specific".

The sex of a brain is decided in the mother's womb and depends, among other factors, on hormone levels.

Higher levels of testosterone makes a male brain and oestrogen a female one.

Professor Dick Swaab from The Netherlands Institute for Brain Research in Amsterdam, said that because men and women's brains are different "we should be looking at diseases as male and female".

"There is a different sex ratio for neurological and psychiatric diseases," he told the BBC.

"In depression, it is very clear that sex hormones are directly interfering with the stress axis in the brain.

"We have shown that sensitive proteins [receptors] for sex hormones are present in the cells that form the stress axis. In women there are more oestrogen receptors and in men more androgen receptors present.

"That results in higher prevalence of depression in women compared to men because the stress axis is more sensitive.

"The oestrogens are directly affecting the production of the stress peptides.

"So for the same amount of stress in the environment, women are more prone to develop depression than men."

Others have shown that hormone levels could play a part in multiple sclerosis.

Dr Glenda Gillies and colleagues at Imperial College London have been looking at Parkinson's Disease, which is far more common in men than in women.

"The idea is that perhaps oestrogen is being neuroprotective so that the neurones that degenerate in PD don't seem to be as susceptible to the processes in women as they are in men," she said.