After several studies are done to identify the chief cause of women showing less severity of COVID-19, researchers have now found the hormone behind it. Estrogen, according to them, is likely to be a prime reason for it. They further said that this hormone’s absence might also be the cause for men to stay at a higher risk of developing complications and showing more severe symptoms than women.
Estrogen is the naturally producing hormone in a woman’s body. They are responsible for the development of sexual and reproductive organs along with female maturation. These are often called as female sex hormones, vital for the sexual development of a woman.
The research team carried out a study on published work of preclinical data regarding the activities of sex-specific hormones, more so, the estrogen. The study conducted has now been published in the journal Current Hypertension Reports.
The main author of the study, Leanne Groben of the Wake Forest Baptist Health Centre in the US said, “We know that coronavirus affects the heart and we know that estrogen is protective against cardiovascular disease in women, so the most likely explanation seemed to be hormonal differences between the sexes.”
The team members said the preclinical data hinted that ACE2 (Angiotensin Converting Enzyme) is the chief receptor to bind to the COVID-19 virus. They added that this could be the cellular receptor as it is attached to the cell membranes of the heart, kidneys, intestines, and arteries, and can aid the virus in entering these organs, leading to the infection.
The review, researchers said, highlighted the estrogen’s potential and action of bringing down ACE2’s levels in the heart. This might be the causative factor in the different severity levels, in turn, in men and women.
The study said that, on the other hand, greater levels of ACE2 in the tissues of male bodies could also answer the question of why symptoms remain worse in men than women.
However, there are probably a lot of many reasons, which account for men’s high susceptibility or higher male sex-specific COVID-19-related death rate. This includes variable lifestyles like smoking, alcohol, etc, and also natural immunity.
“We hope that our review regarding the role of estrogenic hormones in ACE2 expression and regulation may explain the gender differences in Covid-19 infection and outcomes, and serve as a guide for current treatment and the development of new therapies,” Groban said.
The authors concluded saying, “In summary, the accumulating evidence of a somewhat lower rate of Covid-19 disease severity in women needs to be further investigated.”
This study was done after many other researchers discovered that men are more susceptible to Covid-19 induced disease than women. However, it’s the first to reveal estrogen as a possible cause.
In a recently published study in the European Heart Journal, the authors had found higher levels of ACE2 in the blood of men than women, linking it to the vulnerability as the molecule is likely to allow the virus to enter into the organ cells and infect men.
