Gender Differences in Patients With COVID-19: Focus on Severity and Mortality

TLDR

COVID‑19’s outbreak echoes the 2003 SARS epidemic, highlighting a similar global health threat. The study compares severity and mortality between male and female patients with COVID‑19 and SARS. Researchers extracted data from a 43‑patient case series, a public dataset of 37 deceased and 1,019 survivors, and 524 SARS patients from early 2003. Older age and comorbidities increase severity and mortality in both diseases, while male gender independently predicts worse outcomes, with men showing higher severity and death rates across all datasets.

Abstract

Objective: The recent outbreak of Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) is reminiscent of the SARS outbreak in 2003. We aim to compare the severity and mortality between male and female patients with COVID-19 or SARS. Study Design and Setting: We extracted the data from (1) a case series of 43 hospitalized patients we treated, (2) a public data set of the first 37 cases died of COVID-19 and 1019 survived patients in China, and (3) data of 524 patients with SARS, including 139 deaths, from Beijing in early 2003. Results: Older age and high number of comorbidities were associated with higher severity and mortality in patients with both COVID-19 and SARS. Age was comparable between men and women in all data sets. In the case series, however, men tend to be more serious than women (P=0.035). In the public data set, the number of men is 2.4 times that of women in the deceased group (70.3% vs. 29.7%, P=0.016). In SARS patients, the gender role in mortality was also observed. The percentage of male were higher in the deceased group than in the survived group (P=0.015). Conclusion: Male gender is a risk factor for worse outcomes independent of age and susceptibility in patients with COVID.