In the study, the researchers compared the death rates at the beginning of the pandemic for more than 15,000 women with covid-19, which were treated with drugs that raised and lowered estrogen levels, respectively.
The researchers could then see that the risk of death in covid-19 in the group that received estrogen supplementation was less than half, 2.1 percent, compared with the control group that ate neither supplementation nor estrogen reduction, where the mortality was 4.6 percent.
- It is a significantly reduced mortality that we show is related to estrogen supplementation, says Anne-Marie Fors Connolly, researcher at Umeå University and senior author of the study.
Estrogen-poor people were at higher risk for mortality
The group that received estrogen-lowering treatment had the highest risk of death.
But that connection is not ensured, as that group was both older and had undergone cancer treatment, which in itself increases the risk of serious illness and death in covid-19.