In January 2020, especially at a time when doctors were not aware of any enough information about the epidemic that broke out in the Chinese city of Wuhan, a geneticist asked a vague question via his personal account on Twitter. «Why are men more susceptible to the newly discovered Wuhan respiratory syndrome?», Canadian doctor Sharon did not know that what he predicted would be the focus of fear for men infected with the deadly virus.
A few months after the outbreak of Covid-19 in various countries of the world, the health database of «Global Health» revealed that the death rate among men infected with the virus is more than their women counterparts, in most countries for which data is available.
For instance, Men accounted for more than three-quarters of the deaths in Yemen, Bangladesh, Thailand, Malawi and Nigeria, and nearly the same proportion in Afghanistan and Pakistan, during 2020.
India and Mexico came among the countries that recorded the highest number of male deaths due to the virus, with a male mortality rate of 64 percent, Brazil with 58 percent, and the United States with 54 percent.
So, the questions raised were: why men are disproportionately affected by COVID-19 compared to women, and what makes women survive the disease better?
Some scientists assumed, in an attempt to prove the theory, that women have stronger immune systems and are less likely to develop certain types of cancer than men. Also, other evidence indicated that women are more resistant to the development of viral infections.
Returning to Dr. Sharon, the author of the intriguing tweet, and whose book "The Better Half: On the Genetic Superiority of Women", which achieved great sales, after it included evidence confirming the biological strength of women compared to men.
And about attempts to explain women’s survival from the epidemic in a better way compared to men, he explained that they are almost certainly correct assumptions, but we need to search for more explanations.
We also wanted to look for stronger explanations for the main reason behind the increased death rate of COVID-19 among men.
Sex hormones cause death A recent study conducted by scientists at Yale University revealed that sex hormones are the main cause of complications of «Covid-19» infection.
The study’s researchers explained that the estrogen hormone in women, through which the emerging virus enters the body, can block the receptor АСЕ2, and on the other hand, in men, the male hormone androgen facilitates the entry of the virus into the body.
The risk is greater for men over the age of 60, who have the ability to form a primary immune response to «Covid-19» infection, which creates a compensatory reaction of the body, and leads to widespread inflammation and a cytokine storm, which becomes a cause of high mortality among men, compared to women, by 1.7 times.
Scientists are looking for a solution
High levels of male testosterone have been linked to risk and poor immune response in men after influenza vaccination.
While estrogen, the female hormone, was distinguished by enhancing the body's immune response to them, which made scientists study the role of a protein known as "angiotensin-converting enzyme 2", which provides an entry point for the "Covid-19" virus into the body, and is located on the X chromosome.
Because women have two copies of the X chromosome, they are less affected by diseases linked to the X chromosome, which made them less affected by the virus, the scientists explained.
With the emergence of Covid-19 for the first time, it turned out that it is more than just a respiratory disease, as it directly affects the cardiovascular system, kidneys and even the sense of smell and taste, so scientists wanted to conduct more accurate studies to determine whether gender is a risk factor in infection with Covid-19.
Why are men affected more than women?
The bewildering response between men and women to infection with the virus shed lights on the importance of finding a solid scientific reason behind this, so it was necessary to contact a specialist about the matter for scientific analysis.
Dr. Mohamed Rajeh, microbiologist, explained the theory that proves that men are more severely affected than women by Covid-19 infection, pointing to the different immune systems between them, which is a major reason for the disease’s entry into the body.
Rajeh referred to scientific research that revealed that men are three times more likely to die from the virus compared to women, the most prominent of which was the «Ontario» study in Canada, which demonstrated that men have higher rates of hospitalization, intensive care in particular, and death.
As for the reason of differences between the responses to viruses between males and females, Rajeh stressed that the sex hormones are the focus of the whole matter, because the sexual estrogen in women works to protect them from epidemic diseases, although men produce this hormone, but their levels are much lower, which enables relatively more spread in male bodies than females.
Rajeh added that Estrogen is characterized by its ability to increase immunity in the body, and provide a protective effect against Covid-19 infection, but women may also be more at risk of infection after their menopause, when estrogen levels decrease in their body.
Scientists and specialists are still searching for an actual solution to resist the effect of sex hormones and their link to the risk of infection with the virus, after many scientific studies confirmed the link between sex hormones and high death rates among men infected with the virus