https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8135211/More-70-coronavirus-deaths-Italy-men.html
More than 70 per cent of Italy's coronavirus deaths have been among men but scientists there admit they are mystified by the gender gap.
At least 3,400 people in Italy have died of the devastating disease - it yesterday announced it had a higher death toll than China - but less than 1,000 of them have been women.
Men are also more likely to pick up the infection in the first place and account for 60 per cent of confirmed cases, according to Italy's public health research agency.
An earlier analysis found the figures were even higher - that 80 per cent of the deaths were in men and just 20 per cent were in women - but the gap has narrowed over time.
Research in China, where the pandemic started and outbreaks are now petering out, shows that at least two thirds of patients who died were male.
A reliable male to female ratio is not clear in the UK because the epidemic is still in its early stages and the death toll is considerably lower than in other nations.
Scientists say they don't know why women seem less likely to die, but have suggested that women naturally tend to have stronger immune systems and are less likely to have long-term health conditions which make patients more vulnerable.
In China, researchers pointed the finger at men being more likely to smoke and drink, but this was a cultural factor which may be different in other countries.
It may be necessary for men to be more careful than women about avoiding the coronavirus, experts said.
More than 70 per cent of coronavirus deaths in Italy are men but scientists admit they are 'mystified'.
Men are 65 per cent more likely than women to die from coronavirus, according to statistics from The World Health Organization.
Figures from the World Health Organization and Chinese scientists has revealed that 1.7 per cent of women who catch the virus would die compared to 2.8 per cent of men. Long-term health conditions also dramatically raise the risk of death
NHS England said it would not be releasing a breakdown of age, gender, or health conditions in UK deaths.
But another trend – that more men are dying than women – has been less well understood.
'The honest truth is that today we don't know why covid-19 is more severe for men than women or why the magnitude of the difference is greater in Italy than China,' Professor Sabra Klein, at Johns Hopkins' University in Baltimore, Maryland, told the Washington Post.
'What we do know is that in addition to older age, being male is a risk factor for severe outcome and the public should be made aware.'
According to Carlos del Rio, chair of the department of global health at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, exactly what makes a group vulnerable has experts 'mystified'.
'This difference in mortality is creating a lot of anxiety,' he said.
When looking at the death rates in men compared to women, researchers have produced slightly different results – but they are always in the same ballpark.
Across the first 1,697 coronavirus deaths in Italy, 71 percent (1,197) were men and 29 per cent (493) were women, data from Italy's top health research agency Istituto Superiore di Sanità showed.
And a study of more than 72,000 patients from China's Center for Disease Control found that 64 per cent of fatalities there were men.
More researchers from Italy, who published their findings in the prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet, last week, found the male to female ratio of 827 deaths in Italy was 80 per cent men to 20 per cent women.
The World Health Organization and Chinese scientists revealed in early March that the overall fatality rate - the total of proportion of people who died - was 1.7 per cent of women, compared to 2.8 per cent of men.
This gave men a 65 per cent higher chance of succumbing to the virus if they caught it.
But the reasons for this aren't clear.
Some experts believe the gender disparity relates to higher rates of smoking or alcohol problems among men, both of which are habits which weaken the immune system.
For example, in Italy, smoking is much more common among men than women – 25 per cent compared with 15 per cent, according to figures from the WHO.
Others say men are more likely to have underlying health conditions such as heart disease and diabetes, with figures showing this would put them in a more vulnerable position.
Paul Hunter, professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia, believes women have better immune systems to fight infection.
There is also historical evidence that women are biologically better at fighting stress on the body, such as famine, which is due to genetic differences.
Professor Hunter told The Telegraph: 'Women are intrinsically different to men in their immune response.
'Sometimes that works in women's favour. Women seem to have more powerful immune systems, which means they suffer more from autoimmune disease like rheumatoid arthritis, when the immune system responds over-aggressively and ends up attacking the body.
