According to a new study, estrogen is likely to have a dampening effect on the severity of COVID-19 infection in women. The study suggests that this could be the reason why men tend to be more vulnerable to getting severely infected by COVID-19 Virus than the women. Estrogens are female sex hormones that are responsible for sexual and reproductive development in women.
The study has been published in the journal Current Hypertension Reports. In the study, the research team reviewed published preclinical data on the activity of the estrogen hormone.
Lead author Leanne Groban from the Wake Forest Baptist Health Centre in the US said, “We know that coronavirus affects the heart and we know that estrogen is protective against cardiovascular disease in women, so the most likely explanation seemed to be hormonal differences between the sexes”.
After reviewing the published data, researchers found that the angiotensin-converting enzyme2 (ACE2) is the cellular receptor of the Covid-19 virus. ACE2 is attached to the heart, arteries, kidneys and intestines and it helps in the delivery of coronavirus into cells of these organs.
Estrogen helps in reducing the level of ACE2 in the heart, which may prevent the severity of Covid-19 infection in women. On the contrary, higher levels of ACE2 in tissues may worsen the symptoms of Covid-19 infection. According to another recent study which has been published in the European Heart Journal, men comparatively have higher concentrations of ACE2 in their blood than women. And this may be the reason behind men being more likely to experience severe symptoms of Coronavirus infection than women.
Covid-19 related death in men, however, could be due to many reasons including differences in lifestyle and bodies’ natural immunity.
According to Groban, “We hope that our review regarding the role of estrogenic hormones in ACE2 expression and regulation may explain the gender differences in Covid-19 infection and outcomes, and serve as a guide for current treatment and the development of new therapies”.
The study authors commented, “In summary, the accumulating evidence of a somewhat lower rate of Covid-19 disease severity in women needs to be further investigated”.