Opinion Sex differences in postacute infection syndromes, 2024, Julio Silva and Akiko Iwasaki

[SNT Gatchaman]

Sex differences in postacute infection syndromes
Julio Silva; Akiko Iwasaki

Postacute infection syndromes like Long Covid disproportionately affect females, differing in prevalence, symptoms, and potential causes from males. This Viewpoint highlights these sex differences, gaps in current understanding, and the critical need for sex-based research.

Link | PDF (Science Translational Medicine) [Open Access]

 

[Yann04]

Don’t understand much of this but it looks interesting.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

It looks like ill-informed speculation to me. The only figures they quote for autoimmunity that I have previous knowledge for they get wrong. They oversimplify some important things. We have recently discussed the sex ratio for post-EBV fatigue and that may be pretty equal. ME/CFS is obviously strongly female skewed but it does not follow the age profile of any autoimmune disease I am familiar with and we have no evidence for ME/CFS being autoimmune so these people may be barking pop entirely the wrong tree.

Long Covid may have female predominance but I would be very wary of the way data has been collected. The authors don't seem to give any references for the ratio at least when they start out.