London: According to a new study, men are found to be more susceptible to the novel COVID 19. This isn’t just the case with COVID 19, other diseases caused by coronavirus like the SARS was also reported to infect more men than women.
The preference for coronavirus to men depends on a variety of factors. The main causes are the key receptors on the surface of the cells which have an affinity to bind to coronavirus. These key receptors bind to coronavirus and help it in getting injected into the body and are found more diffuse in the blood of men, the study says.
This was first noted in China where the percentage of men who died after getting infected was 2.8 compared to 1.7% women. It wasn’t limited in China and was then observed in Italy as well. Italian men died at a rate of 7.2% while women were at 4.1%. About 54% of the deaths caused due to coronavirus in South Korea were in men.
The study, published on Monday by the European Heart Journal, states that the Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), a key receptor on the surface of cells that binds to the coronavirus and allows it to enter and infect cells, is more diffused in men than women. This was suggested after 3500 blood samples of heart failure patients were collected from more than 11 European countries and the ACE2 concentrations were measured.
The study started before the coronavirus outbreak and did not include patients with COVID-19, explained Adriaan Voors, a professor of cardiology at the University Medical Center (UMC) Groningen in The Netherlands, who co-led the study. But when relevance was noticed with ACE2 as the prime spot for coronavirus to enter the cells, Voor and his associates saw an important link with their previous study and enhanced it. These findings overpower and explain more vividly the reason coronavirus infecting men more than women.
As there hasn’t been a definitive study so far, doctors believe that the solution lies in the combination of behavioral, immunological, hormonal, and genetic factors.
According to the data available, people who consume alcohol and smoke are found to be more vulnerable to the virus. Even here, women were shown to drink and smoke 5 times less than men.
Another factor may be the presence of 2 X chromosomes in women compared to the single X chromosome in men. The X chromosome is largely regarded in helping boost the immune system which also proves the reason why women (XX) are less at risk to coronavirus than men (XY).
Other aspects, according to the doctors, might be an unhealthy lifestyle, handwashing, hormones, and men not seeking help.
Only 31% of men were found to be washing their hands compared to 65% to women. In this too, women were said to be washing with soap while very less percent of men used soap.
