A continuous evaluation over the previous months and ongoing research for a disease as life-threatening as COVID-19, there is always a developing theory and hypotheses around the corner about the probability and possible occurrence of life-changing outcomes universally.
While everyone is couped up in their homes with the fear of coming in contact with the virus, there has been an evolution of a new study wherein it is claimed that women have a stronger immunity as compared to men.
The experts are to say that since the time being COVID-19 took its drastic turn over the humanity, a close observation brought results affirming that the virus affected men-especially the older men rather than the women who were equal in age to men.
The study related to the possibility, as mentioned above, was initially just a precocious point with no proves to guarantee the likelihood of the same. But brand new research publishes in the Journal Nature, had a piece of concrete evidence to prove the earlier theory in actuality.
Details of the New Study
While the earlier research was more of a theory brought out in the dark with not enough conjecture to support the conclusive result, but the new evaluative process proved an absolute possibility of Men dying more in number globally than women.
All around the world, there have been 60 percent of death toll amongst men. Experts pinpointed on the first clue in there- the strength of the immunity in both the genders. Even before conducting the research, it was visibly real that men and women have different responses to the COVID-19 virus.
The lead author of the study conducted and Immunology Professor at Yale University, Akiko Iwasaki, who reported that the experts accumulated nasal saliva and blood samples of about 98 participants in totality.
Among the 98 subjects, there were two broad categories divided wherein one was non-infected control subjects, and the other was the patients who were cured at Yale-New Haven Hospital, United States. After this, all these participants were monitored and kept in comparative evaluation for the time being.
Later, it was found that women have a more healthy and well-conditioned immune response, which involves a dominant role of T Cells, or more medical terminology, T lymphocyte. T cells are those white blood cells that are responsible for eliminating and fight viruses.
The scholars believed that women’s body already has the necessary ability developed when fighting with pathogens which could harm the unborn baby or a newborn child as well. The researchers also found that the poor T Cell performance is negatively co-related to the age of a male patient instead, linked with the worse consequences of a disease. All this wasn’t cased with female patients who made it very lucid that women have more enduring ability than men.
A german Immunologist, Dr. Marcus Altfeld stated that,
You could imagine scenarios where a single shot of a vaccine might be sufficient in young individuals or maybe young women, while older men might need to have three shots of vaccine.
An inflammatory protein developed by a male’s body, which is termed as Cytokine, is another natural immune defense. Cytokine can sometimes cause the immune system to go beyond the fighting level and prove to be deadly for a man; this is termed as ‘Cytokine Storm,’ according to the study published in Nature Journal.
The experts believe that Cytokine Storm is the reason that certain COVID-19 cases in men have gone rogue and severe, while it only leads to a step further progression in the disease in female patients. The lead author Iwasaki says that this needs us to treat both the gender separately. He also claimed that,
For men, We should be enhancing their T cell responses with vaccines, while women could be given treatment to dampen the cytokine response
While individual medical professionals are assured of the study’s accuracy rate, few tend it to be a skeptical theory. One of the professors from the University of Edinburgh, Eleanor Riley said,
the divergence noted in the study is likely due to differences in age or BMI (the sex differences disappear once these other factors are taken into account), and others could have arisen “by chance”. The treatment shouldn’t be defined solely on sex and instead be individually tailored.
There has been a formulation of theories based on the gender’s social, behavioral patterns, which makes their body respond to the virus differently. Hence, a definite notion over the study remains invisible and not strong enough to be continued further as the gospel truth.
