Hormone clue to why virus kills more men

TESTOSTERONE could be the key reason why so many men are dying from coronavirus.

Twice as many males are succumbing to the disease as women in a pattern that has baffled scientists.

Although theories put forward to explain the difference include men being more likely to smoke and the possibility of genetic differences that make their immune systems weaker than women’s, it could be much simpler than that.

Prostate cancer experts have now uncovered intriguing clues that the sex hormone testosterone seems to play a crucial role by inadvertently helping the virus infect cells.

Italian medics discovered that prostate cancer patients given powerful drugs, known as androgen deprivation therapy, to radically cut testosterone levels were four times less likely to die of Covid-19 than those not on them.

Testosterone drives up levels of a protein called TMPRSS2, which is implicated in prostate cancer. But scientists have found that coronavirus uses this protein to ‘unlock’ cells.

London’s Institute for Cancer Research is now looking at data from around 8,000 NHS prostate cancer patients in a trial to see if those on hormone reduction therapy have been less likely to be hospitalised with Covid-19.

The ICR’s Professor Nick James said it was ‘biologically plausible’ that testosterone made men more susceptible to the coronavirus.