A study shows that women with COVID-19 are less likely to be hospitalized than men, and conditions when they get hospitalized exhibit lower mean parameters of inflammatory and respiratory burden driven by the virus.
According to a report from Contagion Live, data presented during the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) 2021 virtual session, a research team from the Johns Hopkins University reported apparent differences in severe COVID-19 among men and women and at diverse ages.
Study findings could specify how clinical practitioners can monitor suspected COVID-19 infection, not to mention a person's risk of severe illness progression.
In her presentation, author Eileen Scully, MD, Ph.D., said early data on pandemic proposed a bias in the risk of male deaths. Un until last month, males have comprised below half, about 49 percent of all COVID-19 diagnoses, although they have compromised roughly 57 percent of all mortalities, based on data from over 130 countries.
Whether the said data result is due completely or partly to factors that include sex-differentiated care-seeking inclinations, health condition, disease presentation, comorbidities, or therapeutic reactions remains unknown, now at 12 months of this global health crisis.
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Study findings emphasize severe risk differences for COVID-19 among men and women and offer guidance near distinctive risk reduction.
Male-Female Differences Analyzed
Scully said, the mechanisms for this impact have not been defined and may offer treatment targets for intervention.
Together with her colleagues, she analyzed data from the John Hopkins Medicine's five-hospital system for COVID-19 test positivity and admission rates in 2020, specifically from March to October.
The study investigators used the JHM COVID-19 registry known as JH-CROWN to cite detailed patient-level data evaluated for male-female differences through descriptive figures.
Out of more than 200,000 tests observed, more than half of 57 percent were reportedly conducted in females. Specifically, the latter-mentioned reported a similarly positive result for COVID-19 at an 8.2-percent rate as males at an 8.9-percent rate.
Nonetheless, males tend to be more prone to getting hospitalized following confirmation of COVID-19 infection, with 33 percent against 28 percent.
Among the more than 2,600 hospitalized patients with COVID-19, more males reported they had a fever. On the other hand, females often reported experience of headaches, vomiting, and loss of smell.
Women with Less Severe Respiratory Parameters Than Men
In terms of respiratory metrics, females were found to have more advantageous profiles, averagely, with lower respiratory rates than men.
Medication prescribed to fight COVID-19 was in the same way frequent among men and women, although tocilizumab, as described by Drugs.com, was prescribed more often to men.
In general, men had a greater occurrence of severe illness and death outcomes across all observed groups than women. The gender outcome difference was most substantial among patients from the 18- to 49-year-old age group, where it was more than double for men.
Despite greater obesity and asthma rates and among patients with COVID-19 hospitalized, females were less often admitted to hospital because of the virus than men.
They also had less frequent severe outcomes and reported less severe respiratory and inflammatory parameters than men.
Findings emphasize severe risk differences for COVID-19 among men and women and offer guidance near distinctive risk reduction.
Mayo Clinic earlier reported, as seen on its YouTube video below, about why more men die from the disease compared to women:
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