Male sex identified by global COVID-19 meta-analysis as a risk factor for death and ITU admission

By H. Peckham, N. D. de Gruijter, C. Raine, A. Radziszewska, Coziana Ciurtin, L. Wedderburn, E. Rosser, K. Webb, C. Deakin. Nature Communications, 2020

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Anecdotal evidence suggests that Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, exhibits differences in morbidity and mortality between sexes. Here, we present a meta-analysis of 3,111,714 reported global cases to demonstrate that, whilst there is no difference in the proportion of males and females with confirmed COVID-19, male patients have almost three times the odds of requiring intensive treatment unit (ITU) admission (OR = 2.84; 95% CI = 2.06, 3.92) and higher odds of death (OR = 1.39; 95% CI = 1.31, 1.47) compared to females. With few exceptions, the sex bias observed in COVID-19 is a worldwide phenomenon. An appreciation of how sex is influencing COVID-19 outcomes will have important implications for clinical management and mitigation strategies for this disease. Anecdotal reports suggest potential severity and outcome differences between sexes following infection by SARS-CoV-2. Here, the authors perform meta-analyses of more than 3 million cases collected from global public data to demonstrate that male patients with COVID-19 are 3 times more likely to require intensive care, and have ~40% higher death rate.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Infectious Diseases, Oncology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/30a5349c27da2b218078be9c6e5f3018d6079a68