Why Do Men and Women React Differently to COVID-19?

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This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Hello. This is Dr JoAnn Manson, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital.

What have we learned about sex and gender differences in COVID-19?

That there are many sex and gender differences in both health and disease is old news. For many conditions, rates differ markedly by sex. There are also important differences in the response to therapeutics, pharmacokinetics, and other factors.

But what about the sex and gender differences that are relevant to COVID-19? My colleagues and I recently published a summary of the evidence and a call to action on this subject.

Rates of COVID infection seem to be quite different between men and women. In many countries, reported case fatality rates are higher in men—in Italy, South Korea, China, and the United States. For example, in Italy, about 70% of the deaths from COVID were in men. In the approximately 60% of deaths from COVID-19.

There could be both biological and behavioral/sociocultural explanations for this.

On the biological side, there's evidence that women have better innate and adaptive immune responsesThey have a more robust response to vaccination and more rapid clearance of viruses and other pathogens. There are genes for immune function that reside on the X chromosome.