I had a similar issue when developing an application with dependent dropdowns. Here is the link to that issue, along with the solution: Help with a dropdown related bug
I believe the following will fix your issue, although I don’t know for sure since your code requires a db component which has an implementation that is not apparent. If you can make a reproducible example, then I can tinker around more.
@app.callback(Output("dropdown-sex", "value"),
[Input("dropdown-pheno", "options")]
[State("dropdown-sex", "value"])
def set_pheno_value(, value):
val = options[0][value]
print(f"setting value to {val}")
return val
Hope that helps!