Why Are So Many More Men Dying from Coronavirus?

SHARON MOALEM 2020年4月10日

第一段：

As coronavirus continues its spread across borders, oceansand continents, there is a perplexing piece of data that has so far evaded aproper explanation: It's still early, but in almost every country that we havenumbers for, more men than women are dying from the virus.

Most attempts to explain this discrepancy have focusedprimarily on behavior, some of which are almost certainly valid. Higher ratesof tobacco consumption, a reluctance to seek proper and timely medical care andeven lower rates of hand-washing absolutely do play a role in who will be hithardest.。

But what is being overlooked in these explanations is thatthe disproportionate toll coronavirus is taking on men isn't an anomaly. Rather, it may be a timely and high-profile demonstration of what up untilrecently has been an underappreciated scientific fact: When it comes tosurvival, men are the weaker sex.

第二段：

What lies behind this female genetic superiority? It startsat the chromosomal level.

Biologists have long understood that XX chromosomes givefemales an advantage in some arenas: Having the use of a spare X in case theother is somehow defective is why females are less susceptible to disorderslike color blindness, for instance.

If one X chromosome has genes that are better at recognizinginvading viruses like Covid-19, for instance, immune cells using that X canfocus on that task, while immune cells using the other X chromosome focus on, say,killing cells infected with Covid-19 instead, making the fight against thevirus more efficient.

第三段：

The cost women seem to pay for having a more aggressiveimmune system, one that's better at battling both malignant cells and invadingmicrobes, is being more prone to autoimmune diseases.

But the understanding of these differences has the potentialto fill in the gaps of knowledge that have kept us from making medicalbreakthroughs. Our male-centric, one-size-fits-all model of health care and theresearch culture that stems from it need to change. Nowhere is this urgencymore apparent than the current global pandemic, as the alarming numbers of maledeaths worldwide continues to climb daily.