AUTHOR=Jin Jian-Min , Bai Peng , He Wei , Wu Fei , Liu Xiao-Fang , Han De-Min , Liu Shi , Yang Jin-Kui 

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

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Public Health

VOLUME=Volume 8 - 2020

YEAR=2020

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.00152

DOI=10.3389/fpubh.2020.00152

ISSN=2296-2565

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.