In the case series, men tended to have more severe cases of COVID-19 (P=0.035). In the public data set, the number of men who died from COVID-19 was 2.4 times the number of women (P=0.016). In the data taken from SARS patients from 2003, the percentage of males were higher in the deceased group than in the group that survived (P=0.015).

Gender Differences in Patients With COVID-19: Focus on Severity and Mortality: Results

Data were used from a case series of 43 patients, a public data set of the first 37 cases of patients who died of COVID-19 and 1,019 patients who survived in China, and information about 524 patients with SARS (139 deaths) from Beijing in 2003. 

Smith College

COVID-19 and Gender by Geographic Location 

Jin, J., Bai, P., He, W., Wu, F., Liu, X., Han, D., . . . Yang, J. (2020). Gender Differences in Patients With COVID-19: Focus on Severity and Mortality. Frontiers in Public Health, 8. doi:10.3389/fpubh.2020.00152
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.00152/full

Gender Differences in Patients With COVID-19: Focus on Severity and Mortality

Gender Differences in Patients With COVID-19: Focus on Severity and Mortality: Background Information

A study of 140 COVID-19 patients in China showed an equal sex distribution, but a study of critically ill COVID-19 patients found men to be more affected (67%) compared to woman. In the most recent report of 1099 COVID-19 patients from 552 Hospitals in over 30 provinces of China, 58% of the patients were men. Overall, these data indicate men may be more susceptible to the virus. 

Sex difference and smoking predisposition in patients with COVID-19: Results

- The Iwasaki Group examined sex differences in viral loads, SARS-CoV-2-specific antibody titers, plasma cytokines, as well as blood cell phenotyping in COVID-19 patients with moderate disease who had not received immunomodulatory medications. 

- The study revealed that male patients had higher plasma levels of innate immune cytokines such as IL-8 and IL-18 along with more robust induction of non-classical monocytes. In contrast, female patients mounted significantly more robust T cell activation than male patients during SARS-CoV-2 infection, which was sustained in old age. 

- Researchers also found that a poor T cell response negatively correlated with patients’ age and was associated with worse disease outcome in male patients, but not in female patients. Conversely, higher innate immune cytokines in female patients associated with worse disease progression, but not in male patients. 

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