A new study suggests that Men’s blood have an enzyme that can be responsible for higher infection rate of COVID-19 or Coronavirus in males as compare to females.
A new study published in European Heart Journal suggests that a higher concentration of this enzyme called Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme 2 (ACE2), found in the blood of males, could be responsible for higher vulnerability of Coronavirus. Blood samples of 2,608 men and 1,112 women from 11 European countries were analyzed to come to this possibility. A group of scientists led by Dr Adriaan Voors from the University of Groningen, Netherlands, and University of Leicester, UK, studied these samples from patients with heart failure and concluded that “cohorts of patients with heart failure, plasma concentrations of ACE2 were higher in men than in women”. “ACE2 is a receptor on the surface cells. It binds to the coronavirus and allows it to enter and infect healthy cells after it has been modified by another protein on the surface of the cell,” said Dr. Adriaan Voors.
Leading experts from the industry also disagrees to the conclusions of this study.
Dr. Mary Norine Walsh, medical director for heart failure and cardiac transplantation at St. Vincent Heart Center in Indianapolis, says that report findings can’t be extrapolated to all men because the study population was restricted to heart failure patients. Researchers don’t know if the enzyme is higher in healthy or younger men. “In many ways, men are more at risk, and this has been shown in previous epidemics,” she said. “This isn’t the first time that we’ve seen this.”
Prof John Boyd Chambers, Professor of Clinical Cardiology at Guy's and St. Thomas' Hospitals, also pointed out that the research have limitations. "Their patients had heart failure and were not necessarily representative of fit people of a similar age; they measured circulating and not membrane-bound ACE2, and obviously it is the membrane-bound protein to which the SARS-COV-2 virus might attach," Professor Boyd Chambers said. "This study is hypothesis-generating and suggests that future work should assess whether ACE2 levels affect the risk of developing Covid-19 or the severity of the disease," he said.
Other studies suggests that Men are twice more likely to be in danger from Coronavirus than women. Another Study from The American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine suggests that Men over 50, with chronic diseases such as diabetes and hypertension are at greater risk of death from this virus.
