Men will get female sex hormones to test possible coronavirus treatment, doctors say
Men are more likely than women to get sicker from COVID-19 and die from it, media outlets reported.
Men are 2.5 times more likely to have severe symptoms of coronavirus and are therefore more likely to die from the disease than women, Forbes reported, citing an analysis by researchers in Shenzhen, China.
Two clinical trials are now trying to determine if giving men female sex hormones can help them fight off the virus.
Starting last Friday, scientists at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University in New York are giving low-dose estrogen patches to men ages 18 and older and women ages 55 and over diagnosed with COVID-19, CBS News reported.
“We hope to have an answer of is this a viable choice for treatment?” Dr. Sharon Nachman, lead investigator on the study, told CBS.
The patients are wearing the patches, which contain 1/20th the estrogen in pregnant women, for seven days and it won’t have a “feminizing effect” on men, according to CBS.
Another study at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, involves 40 men who have mild to moderate symptoms and have tested positive for COVID-19, The New York Times reported. Half of the participants will serve as the control group, and the other half of patients will get two progesterone shots a day for five days, the outlet reported.
The men who are given progesterone will be monitored for whether or not their condition improves, if they need intensive care or to go on a ventilator, and how their progress compares to those who were not given any hormones, according to The New York Times.
Some experts say that hormones might not be a determining factor in outcomes for the coronavirus pandemic because elderly women, who have reduced hormone levels after menopause, have higher survival rates than men their same age, according to The New York Times.
A study published by the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine found that testosterone has an effect on “immune system response and engagement, resulting in a less robust immunologic response in” men.
Other experts say women have stronger immune systems than men.
“This is a pattern we’ve seen with many viral infections of the respiratory tract — men can have worse outcomes,” Sabra Klein, a scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told The New York Times. “We’ve seen this with other viruses. Women fight them off better.”
This story was originally published April 29, 2020 at 5:54 PM with the headline "Men will get female sex hormones to test possible coronavirus treatment, doctors say."