There have been reports that men showed more severe symptoms of corona compared to women and they are more likely to die, baffling the scientists.
Now researchers at Montefiore Health System and Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Kasturba Hospital for Infectious Diseases in Mumbai have come up with some explanation.
The study found that men clear the virus from their bodies slower than women and it could be due to a potential male-only “reservoir” for coronavirus. Their study was uploaded today to MedRxiv.
“COVID-19 studies worldwide have consistently shown a higher incidence and greater severity of the disease in men compared with women,” says Aditi Shastri, M.D, the author. “Our collaborative study found that men have more difficulty clearing coronavirus following infection, which could explain their more serious problems with COVID-19 disease.”
The viral-clearance analysis involved 68 people (48 men and 20 women) with symptoms of COVID-19 who were examined at Kasturba Hospital for Infectious Diseases. The women cleared the virus significantly earlier than men: a median of four days for women vs. six days for men.
Next, three Mumbai families were identified in which men and women had tested positive for coronavirus infection on swab testing. Again, the women in all three families cleared the coronavirus earlier than male members of the same family.
