The mortality rate of patients with low levels of male sex hormone, testosterone is considerably high. The new finding is also in line with an earlier finding that men are more likely to die from Covid-19 than women.
The research was carried out by a German hospital which proved that testosterone has something to do with the heightened symptoms of Covid-19 leading to death. Researchers at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf assessed the first 45 Covid-19 patients (35 men, 10 women) admitted to the hospital’s intensive care unit.
From this group, nine men and three women died. Seven of the patients meanwhile required oxygen while 33 were placed onto ventilators. Out of the 35 men, more than two thirds (68.6 percent) recorded low levels of testosterone, the study said.
In contrast, over half of the female patients (60 percent) had raised testosterone levels. Testosterone is one of the many hormones responsible for monitoring the body’s immune response. Scientists believe that the elevated symptoms of Covid-19 are due to a medical condition called Cytokine storm– a hyper-inflammatory condition caused by an overactive immune system, which has been seen in many of those suffering from Covid-19.
Professor Gülsah Gabriel, one of the researchers said that “Men with normal testosterone levels do not present a cytokine storm and thus are more likely to survive.”But for female coronavirus patients, the German study found that elevated testosterone levels were linked to a heightened inflammatory response.
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