COVID-19 Study Shows That Men Have Over Double The Death Rate Of Women


Credit: CDC A study of gender differences in COVID-19 finds that men have more severe disease and are over twice as likely to die. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has exploded across the globe, leaving healthcare staff, policy makers and ordinary people struggling. We still don't completely understand why some people are more severely affected by the virus than others.

So far, the elderly and those with certain pre-existing conditions appear to be at greater risk. A new study in open-access journal Frontiers in Public Health is the first to examine gender differences in COVID-19 patients. The study finds that men and women are equally likely to contract the virus, but men are significantly more likely to suffer severe effects of the disease and die. The results suggest that additional care may be required for older men or those with underlying conditions.

While most people with COVID-19 experience mild symptoms, identifying the factors that predispose people to severe disease and death could help society to protect and treat those most at risk.

So far, researchers have confirmed that older COVID-19 patients and those with certain underlying conditions, such as heart disease and respiratory conditions, are at greater risk of severe disease and death. However, Dr. Jin-Kui Yang, a physician at Beijing Tongren Hospital in China, noticed a trend among COVID-19 patients who died.

"Early in January we noticed that the number of men dying from COVID-19 appeared to be higher than the number of women," said Yang. "This raised a question: are men more susceptible to getting or dying from COVID-19? We found that no-one had measured gender differences in COVID-19 patients, and so began investigating."

Yang and a group of colleagues analyzed several patient datasets to see if there were differences in how men and women respond to COVID-19. This included data on 43 patients who the doctors had treated themselves and a publicly available dataset on 1056 COVID-19 patients.

The virus responsible for COVID-19 is similar to the virus behind the 2003 SARS outbreak, and it attaches to the same protein, called ACE2, on cells it attacks. Given this similarity, the doctors also analyzed a dataset of 524 SARS patients from 2003.

Among the COVID-19 patients, the researchers confirmed that older people and those with specific underlying conditions tended to have more severe disease and were more likely to die. The age and numbers of infected men and women were similar, but men tended to have more severe disease.

Strikingly, in the largest COVID-19 dataset, over 70% of the patients who died were men, meaning that men had almost 2.5 times the death rate of women. And interestingly, being male was a significant risk-factor for worse disease severity, regardless of age.

In the SARS dataset from 2003, the researchers found a similar trend, with a significantly higher mortality rate amongst males compared with females. Interestingly, levels of ACE2, the protein involved in the viral attack in both SARS and COVID-19, tends to be present in higher levels in men, and also patients with cardiovascular disease and diabetes, all of whom have worse outcomes in COVID-19.

However, further research is needed to determine exactly why men with COVID-19 tend to fare worse than women. While the current study has a small sample size, and larger studies are needed to confirm the results, this is the first preliminary indication that male gender is a significant risk factor for COVID-19 severity and death.

The study may have important implications for patient care. "We recommend that additional supportive care and prompt access to the intensive care unit may be necessary for older male patients," said Yang.
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Scientists have found longevity biomarkers

  • An international group of scientists studied the effects of 17 different lifespan-extending interventions on gene activity in mice and discovered genetic biomarkers of longevity. The results of their study were published in the journal Cell Metabolism.
  • Nowadays, dozens of interventions are known that extend the lifespan of various living organisms ranging from yeast to mammals. They include chemical compounds (e.g. rapamycin), genetic interventions (e.g. mutations associated with disruption of growth hormone synthesis), and diets (e.g. caloric restriction). Some targets of these interventions have been discovered. However, there is still no clear understanding of the systemic molecular mechanisms leading to lifespan extension.
  • A group of scientists from Skoltech, Moscow State University and Harvard University decided to fill this gap and identify crucial molecular processes associated with longevity. 
  • To do so, they looked at the effects of various lifespan-extending interventions on the activity of genes in a mouse, a commonly used model organism closely related to humans.
  • The scientists identified a group of genes, whose activity was associated with longevity in response to various interventions, serving as biomarkers of lifespan extension.
  • "In our lab, we subjected mice of different sexes and ages to 8 longevity interventions and analyzed gene expression changes induced by these treatments. After aggregating our data with the datasets published by other groups, we obtained gene activity profiles of 17 interventions. Although in general the effects produced by individual treatments turned out to be rather specific, a certain group of genes changed its expression in a similar way in response to different lifespan-extending interventions," says the first author of the study, Alexander Tyshkovskiy.
  • The scientists then applied the discovered biomarkers to search for other interventions with the same effect on their activity and, therefore, high potential for lifespan extension. In their work, the researchers identified several such treatments, including chronic hypoxia and chemical compounds, such as antioxidant ascorbyl-palmitate and mTOR inhibitor, KU-0063794.
  • "Currently, we are validating these hits by testing their effect on the mouse lifespan. We hope that our biomarkers will significantly facilitate the search for new longevity interventions and help improve the healthspan and lifespan in rodents and, in the long term, in humans," says Alexander.
  • In addition to their scientific research, the scientists developed GENtervention, an application that offers fast and user-friendly tools for investigating the associations between the activity of individual genes and longevity.Source: https://www.domain-b.com/
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