Men are more likely to die from COVID-19 than women.
Recent research from the United Kingdom, which examined nearly 11,000 COVID-19-related deaths, found that men were nearly twice as likely to die from the coronavirus. Data from Wuhan, China, suggest that the difference may be even more pronounced: This study showed that men die of the disease 2.4 times more often than women.
A study published Wednesday in the journal Nature offers a potential reason for this trend: Women seem to develop a stronger T-cell response to the virus than men do.
“We now have clear data suggesting that the immune landscape in COVID-19 patients is significantly different between the sexes and that these differences may underlie increased susceptibility to disease in men,” said Akiko Iwasaki, senior author of the new study, in a press release. ,
T cells are a type of white blood cell that help our immune system identify and destroy an invading virus. They can also remember that virus and attack again when it comes back. According to the new study, women develop more T cells in response to the coronavirus than men do.
What’s more, the strength of men’s T-cell responses to the virus – how much of the protective protein they develop, and how fast – seems to diminish with age. Older men with poorer T-cell responses develop more severe cases of COVID-19, the researchers behind the new study found.
The findings raise questions about whether male and female COVID-19 patients require different treatments: The Iwasaki team recommended therapeutic interventions and vaccines to increase T-cell immune responses in men.
Women may produce more T cells in response to the coronavirus than men
A man and woman wear masks to stop the coronavirus in New York City.
Carlos Jasso / Reuters
Iwasaki and her colleagues examined a cohort of 17 male and 22 female coronavirus patients admitted to Yale-New Haven Hospital between March 18 and May 9. They found that the strength of a man’s T-cell responses depended on his age: Older men had poorer T-cell responses than younger men.
A woman’s age, on the other hand, does not affect the robustness of her T-cell response.
However, women’s immune systems sometimes seemed to react almost too aggressively. Both male and female patients had elevated levels of cytokines – egg proteins produced by white blood cells to further activate the immune response – relative to healthy individuals. But the study found that when cytokine levels were increased, women were more likely to become seriously ill.
An excess of cytokines, known as a “cytokine storm”, can cause the body to attack its own healthy cells. This can lead to acute respiratory distress syndrome, the life-threatening lung injury behind many deaths from the coronavirus.
A human T lymphocyte (also called a T cell) from a healthy donor’s immune system.
NIAID
Men and women may need different COVID-19 treatments
Iwasaki told The New York Times that the findings suggest that “natural infection clearly fails” to elicit a proper immune response in men, meaning they may need different doses of future coronavirus vaccines.
“You can imagine scenarios where a single shot of a vaccine would be enough for young individuals or maybe young women, while older men might need three shots of a vaccine,” said Marcus Altfeld, an immunologist at the Heinrich Pette Institute in Germany. it was not involved in the study, the New York Times reported.
A woman wearing a mask in London, England.
Ilyas Tayfun Salci / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Some female patients, meanwhile, may benefit from treatments that dampen their immune responses prior to a cytokine storm,
“Together, these data suggest that we need different strategies to ensure that treatments and vaccines are equally effective for both women and men,” Iwasaki said in a press release.
Men’s smoking habits and pre-existing health conditions may also play a role
Some scientists believe that behavioral factors can also make men around the world vulnerable to severe cases of COVID-19.
A primary difference when playing is that men smoke more cigarettes than women, on average, which affects their disease risks. The chances of smokers needing intensive care and mechanical ventilation are more than double those of non-smokers, according to the Italian National Health Institute.
In China, more than 50% of Chinese men smoke, while less than 3% of Chinese women do so, according to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. In Italy, about 7 million men smoke compared to 4.5 million women.
A man with a face mask smokes on January 30, 2020 outside Beijing Railway Station in China.
Carlos Garcia Rawlins / Reuters
Men also have higher rates of pre-existing health conditions which increase their risk of developing severe cases of coronavirus. According to CNN, men in Italy and China have higher rates of high blood pressure than women in both countries. Chinese men are also more likely to have Type 2 diabetes than Chinese women.
Men also have a higher risk of coronary heart disease than women, according to the British Medical Journal.
A man wearing a mask on Wall Street during the outbreak of coronavirus in New York City, March 13, 2020.
Lucas Jackson / Reuters
“In general, we see that there is just a higher rate of serious illness in men,” Megan Coffee, an infectious clinic in New York City, told Business Insider earlier. “Women can certainly develop acute respiratory distress syndrome, but there is a preference for men who develop a severe outcome.”
