- It can be said that nature has given women a certain innate protection against some serious infections and that sex hormones contribute in this respect.
Where in the menstrual cycle the woman is also seems to play a role, says Peik Brundin, infection doctor and doctoral student at Umeå University.
In the future, the results can be used for research on, among other things, cancer and autoimmune diseases such as rheumatism.
- There are indications that women have better resistance to infection than men and this may mean that women and men may need different treatments.
But it is not the case that all treatments work better on women, for example, but it depends on what kind of treatment you use based on whether you have an advantage or a disadvantage depending on gender.
When it comes to rheumatism and MS, women have an increased risk that can partly be seen as the downside of a stronger immune system, says Peik Brundin.
Risk factor for being a man with covid
Men become significantly sicker than women in many infectious diseases and when it comes to covid-19, men are overrepresented in the intensive care units and have a clearly higher mortality rate than women.
Even with seasonal flu, women usually have milder symptoms with fewer hospitalizations than men.
- The corona pandemic makes this very clear, here it is a risk factor to be a man, says Peik Brundin.
The dissertation sheds new light on how the female sex hormone signals in white blood cells, and how the hormones affect the immune system.
The most important results show that a number of immune-related genes are activated depending on the phase of the menstrual cycle in which women are, which strengthens the perception that sex hormones affect the immune system.
- By better understanding how gender differences in disease arise, we can learn whether men and women would benefit from gender-specific treatment, dosage of drugs or vaccines, or if the symptom picture differs between the sexes, Peik Brundin concludes.