Why Does the Coronavirus hit men Harder – Burning Issues – Free PDF

WEAKER IMMUNE RESPONSE

• Men produce a weaker immune response to the virus than do women, the researchers concluded.
• The findings, published Wednesday in Nature, suggest that men, particularly those older than age 60, may need to depend more on vaccines to protect against the infection.

IMMUNE SYSTEM

• The results are consistent with what’s known about sex differences following various challenges to the immune system.
• Women mount faster and stronger immune responses, perhaps because their bodies are rigged to fight pathogens that threaten unborn or newborn children.

MORE PRONE

• But over time, an immune system in a constant state of high alert can be harmful. Most autoimmune diseases — characterized by an overly strong immune response — are much more prevalent in women than in men, for example.
• “We are looking at two sides of the same coin,” said Dr. Marcus Altfeld, an immunologist at the Heinrich Pette Institute and at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany.

MORE SHOTS OF VACCINE

• The findings underscore the need for companies pursing coronavirus vaccines to parse their data by sex and may influence decisions about dosing, Altfeld and other experts said.
• “You could imagine scenarios where a single shot of a vaccine might be sufficient in young individuals or maybe young women, while older men might need to have three shots of vaccine,” Altfeld sai

RESEARCH

• Companies pursuing coronavirus vaccines have not yet released clinical data analyzed by the participants’ sex, but the Food and Drug Administration has asked them to do so, as well as by racial and ethnic background, said Dr. William Gruber, a vice president at Pfizer.
• Iwasaki’s team analyzed immune responses in 17 men and 22 women who were admitted to the hospital soon after they were infected with the coronavirus. The researchers collected blood, nasopharyngeal swabs, saliva, urine and stool from the patients every three to seven days.

RESEARCH

• The analysis excluded patients on ventilators and those taking drugs that affect the immune system “to make sure that we’re measuring natural immune response to the virus,” Iwasaki said.
• The researchers also analyzed data from an additional 59 men and women who did not meet those criteria.
• Overall, the scientists found, the women’s bodies produced more T-cells, which can kill virus-infected cells and stop the infection from spreading.

T CELLS

• Men showed much weaker activation of T-cells, and that lag was linked to how sick the men became. The older the men, the weaker their T-cell responses.
• “When they age, they lose their ability to stimulate T-cells,” Iwasaki said. “If you look at the ones that really failed to make T-cells, they were the ones who did worse with disease.”
• But “women who are older — even very old, like 90 years old — these women are still making pretty good, decent immune response,” she added.

AGE FACTOR

• The study has limitations. It was small, and the patients were older than 60 on average, making it difficult to assess how the immune response changes with age.
• “We know that age is proving to be a very important factor in COVID-19 outcomes, and the intersection of age and sex must be explored,” said Sabra Klein, a vaccine expert at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

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