Why do more men die of Coronavirus than women?

(AFP)

As the world faces the foremost serious public health crisis during a century, scientists and medical professionals are scrambling to know who is most susceptible to Covid-19 and why. But one clear trend is emerging: Men are far more likely to die from the disease than women.

It is a pattern occurring in almost every country as researchers frantically begin to collate data from national health authorities.

"We are seeing with every country that gives us with sex-disaggregated data that men are more likely to die from the virus, anything from 10 percent to quite twice as likely," said professor Sarah Hawkes, the director of the UCL Centre for Gender and Global Health within the UK.

The centre is home to the independent Global Health 50/50 initiative, which has began a project to collate data on gender and Covid-19 – the disease caused by the novel coronavirus – from across the world .

While much emphasis was initially placed on the elderly or those that have pre-existing health conditions as being in danger of dying from the virus, it's now becoming clear that being male is additionally an element .

Data from China first revealed a gender gap in deaths, with 64 percent of male sufferers dying compared to 36 percent of girls , consistent with the worldwide Health 50/50 initiative.

Figures from France, Germany, Italy, South Korea and Spain have confirmed the pattern.

In the two hardest-hit European nations, 71 percent of the Covid-19 deaths in Italy were male while in Spain almost twice as many men as women have died.

"Undoubtedly, a neighborhood of this is often biology but an outsized a part of this difference is additionally driven by gender behaviour, like far higher levels of smoking and drinking among men compared to women," professor Hawkes told PRESS.

Here in France, figures from the general public Health institute show that, from March 1 to March 22, 57 percent of Covid-19 deaths were men with the typical age being 81 years old.

But Hawkes said that when it involves contracting the virus, the gender gap is way more less noticeable – women are at even as much risk as men of being infected.

While it's still too early to work out why the gender gap is emerging, researchers point to many possible factors.

Data has already shown that other coronaviruses, like SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome), tend to affect men disproportionately.

Lifestyle choices and behaviours also play a neighborhood , with men less likely to hunt medical help at the primary signs of disease or to follow public heath advice. Studies show that men also are less likely to scrub their hands or use soap.

They are also more likely to enjoys risky lifestyle behaviours like drinking and smoking, which suggests men have a better incidence of both pulmonary and disorder .

Then there are the biological factors, with hormones, particularly oestrogen, playing a task in increasing women’s antiviral response. Genetic structure is another important factor, with a big number of genes that regulate the immune reaction encoded on the X chromosome , of which women have two while men only have one.

"We know that women’s immune systems function differently to men’s – in any case , women’s bodies are designed to host a foetus for nine months at a time without it being rejected as a far off body," professor Hawkes said.

Dr Sabra Klein, an immunologist and a specialist in gender and infectious diseases at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Heath, spoke to PRESS’s The 51 Percent show earlier in March about the possible reasons for men being at more risk of dying from Covid-19.

"Generally speaking, women mount greater immune responses to a spread of viruses also as other infectious agents than do men," Dr Klein said.

"There are biological differences within the immune systems between men and ladies which impact our ability to fight an infection," she said, pointing to blood samples from China collected from Covid-19 patients.

"[Those samples] suggest our blood chemistry and immune cell counts do, in fact, differ between men and ladies , which might be contributing to a number of the gender differences that we’re observing within the severity of the disease."

In the meantime, researchers are pleading with countries to supply specific data on gender and age differences when it involves recording deaths, especially within the US and Britain.

"The Covid-19 crisis reveals, in stark terms, that in most countries, the data-for-decision-making process is broken," said Dr Kent Bush, the co-director of worldwide Heath 50/50.

"We have the info , but too often we fail to analyse it and that we fail to act thereon . While it’s great to ascertain some countries stepping up, too many still don’t, including those with the time to try to to better, like the [United] States and therefore the UK.”

>> Watch our interview with Dr Sabra Klein on The 51 Percent by clicking here.

Such data should be wont to shape public heath messaging, said Dr Klein.

"This pandemic may find yourself being the defining moment for sex and gender within the way we view infectious diseases," she said.

"I am disappointed that a lot of of the general public health officials round the world aren't speaking out that being male is indeed a risk factor for a more severe outcome and, especially , being an older male. I do think that there might be public heath messaging [that] could occur therein context."

She later told PRESS that such public health advice is critical when there's no drug to stop or vaccine to assist cure the virus.

“So if more older-aged men knew this, or their spouses knew this, it's going to mean they might be more vigilant, and also taking advantage of healthcare while also practising good hygiene.”

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