Male sex identified by global COVID-19 meta-analysis as a risk factor for death and ITU admission

Hannah Peckham, Nina M. Gruijter, Charles Raine, Anna Radziszewska, Coziana Ciurtin, Lucy R. Wedderburn, Elizabeth C. Rosser, Kate Webb () and Claire T. Deakin ()
Additional contact information
Hannah Peckham: Centre for Adolescent Rheumatology Versus Arthritis at UCL, UCLH, GOSH
Nina M. Gruijter: Centre for Adolescent Rheumatology Versus Arthritis at UCL, UCLH, GOSH
Charles Raine: Centre for Rheumatology Research, Division of Medicine, UCL
Anna Radziszewska: Centre for Adolescent Rheumatology Versus Arthritis at UCL, UCLH, GOSH
Coziana Ciurtin: Centre for Adolescent Rheumatology Versus Arthritis at UCL, UCLH, GOSH
Lucy R. Wedderburn: Centre for Adolescent Rheumatology Versus Arthritis at UCL, UCLH, GOSH
Elizabeth C. Rosser: Centre for Adolescent Rheumatology Versus Arthritis at UCL, UCLH, GOSH
Kate Webb: University of Cape Town
Claire T. Deakin: Centre for Adolescent Rheumatology Versus Arthritis at UCL, UCLH, GOSH

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Anecdotal evidence suggests that Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, exhibits differences in morbidity and mortality between sexes. Here, we present a meta-analysis of 3,111,714 reported global cases to demonstrate that, whilst there is no difference in the proportion of males and females with confirmed COVID-19, male patients have almost three times the odds of requiring intensive treatment unit (ITU) admission (OR = 2.84; 95% CI = 2.06, 3.92) and higher odds of death (OR = 1.39; 95% CI = 1.31, 1.47) compared to females. With few exceptions, the sex bias observed in COVID-19 is a worldwide phenomenon. An appreciation of how sex is influencing COVID-19 outcomes will have important implications for clinical management and mitigation strategies for this disease.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19741-6 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-19741-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-19741-6

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().