Early on in the pandemic, a worse clinical scenario for the male of the species emerged. A study published mid-May from Italian researchers offered early statistics from the WHO and Chinese scientists: a death rate of 1.7% for women and 2.8% for men. Then Hong Kong hospitals reported that 15% of females and 32% of males with COVID-19 needed intensive care or had died.
In July a Perspective published in Nature Reviews Immunology from researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Montreal noted a similar "male bias" for other viral infections, including SARS and MERS. By then, the wide community testing in South Korea and data from the U.S. indicated 1.5-fold higher mortality for men for COVID-19. The pattern repeated in 38 countries, for patients of all ages.
Now a new study published in Nature Communications expands the increased risk for those who have only one X chromosome
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