Biological differences between men and women receive little attention in the studies of drugs to treat covid-19. This is evident from a study by scientists from Maastricht UMC +. They looked at thirty relevant studies.
Yet the differences between men and women are indeed relevant. Men are more vulnerable to a bad course of covid-19. This may mean that men and women should not be treated in the same way
Only one study examined retrospectively whether gender differences influenced the results. In that study of the effect of the anti-Ebola drug remdesivir in the treatment of covid-19, a marginal difference was found. Female covid-19 patients appeared to benefit slightly more from remdesivir than male patients, but the difference was not statistically significant.
Women were under-represented in the study population in the studies. Of the more than 6,100 patients in the thirty studies from the first half of this year, 41 percent were women. A quarter of the studies involved twice as many men as women. The Maastricht scientists led by cardiologist in training Chahinda Ghossein-Doha and internist-intensivist-epidemiologist Bas van Bussel have their research published in EClinicalMedicine, published by The Lancet.
Mirror to science
Research into the coronavirus, vaccines that protect against it and medicines against covid-19 is taking place under great time pressure.
“I don’t really think that time pressure is an argument,” says Ghossein-Doha. “It really doesn’t take much extra time to make such an analysis of the role of gender differences. The data is there, you can make such an analysis at the touch of a button. And making that button is not much work. . “
–
