Why women may be better equipped to fight COVID-19

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When it comes to COVID-19, women seem to be the stronger sex, suffering severe disease at about half the rate as men, but the reason for this has been elusive.

In a new study from Duke Health, researchers found that women have more of a certain type of immune cell that fights infections in mucosal tissue, and these immune cells amass in the lungs, poised to attack the COVID virus.

The team found that a white blood cell called mucosal-associated invariant T cells, or MAIT cell, circulated more abundantly in the blood from healthy women compared to healthy men.

MAIT cells are highly specialized white blood cells that contribute to immune defenses in mucosal organs and tissues.

Among COVID patients, however, there were few MAIT cells circulating in the blood, even among women, where the population of MAIT cells radically fell off, leading the researchers to question where these cells had gone.

They found their answer in tissue samples from the lungs of COVID patients.

Overall, there was an abundance of MAIT cells in the lung tissue of people with COVID, but upon closer inspection, they found night-and-day differences between the sexes.

The team says circulating MAIT cells in women expressed genes indicative of a robust profile poised for fighting an infection, but this was not the case in males.

There are numerous examples of sexual differences in the immune responses to infections, noting those differences have been prevalent all along with COVID-19.

The findings uncover a female-specific protective profile carried out by these MAIT cells, and this could potentially help guide the development of treatments and therapies.

If you care about COVID-19, please read studies about this anti-viral treatment can have double effects on COVID-19 and findings of this hormone may protect women from severe COVID-19.

For more information about COVID-19 treatment and prevention, please see recent studies about this gut inflammation may be an early sign of COVID-19 and results showing that these 2 drugs provide new hope to treat COVID-19.

The study is published in the Cell Press journal Med. One author of the study is Daniel Saban, Ph.D.

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