Men can recover from the flu faster

Men produce a key lung healing protein more than women so they can recover more quickly from a flu infection, according to a new study from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, published recently in the journal
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researchers implanted the flu virus in experimental male mice and cells extracted from males, and found that in both male mice and male human cells, a number of growth factor proteins that promote wound healing, double-tone proteins, were produced. Male mice recovered faster than female mice. But if it was a male mouse that lacked bitonin, it would heal at a much longer time than a female mouse.
The latest findings may confirm that women produce less bitones, which cause them to have slower tissue repair during flu recovery," said Sabra Klein, an associate professor in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. This is bound to lead to changes in influenza treatment options, especially for women, once infected with influenza, it is necessary to maximize the production of bitones. In
, Klein's team tested mice with a non-lethal dose of influenza A(H1N1) virus infection. The influenza A virus, which was endemic worldwide between 2009 and 2010, has killed more than 18,000 people. The researchers observed that although male and female mice had comparable levels of the infected virus and were also removed from the mice, the infection rate was significantly higher in female mice. During the acute phase of infection, the lung infection in female mice is more severe and recovery is slow during recovery.
that bitones are key factors based on gender differences. This known growth factor protein promotes the proliferation of skin, lungs, and skin cells on other surfaces of the body, including the recovery of lung infections, during wound healing.
addition, male mice that had been genetically modified and lacked bitones had the same characteristics as female mice, and when infected with the virus, the symptoms became more severe and the recovery was slower. The severity of infection in women who lack bitones remains relatively constant, suggesting that lung healing proteins mainly affect men.
same time, the team found that the production of double-tone proteins was more pronounced only when the cells came from males after the human pulmonary endocrine cells in mice and petri dishes were infected with the influenza virus.
from this, double-tone protein can help improve influenza virus infection, perhaps as a new treatment for severe influenza. Back in 2016, a study by Klein and colleagues showed that the sex hormone progesterone stimulates the production of bitones in female mice. "We found in our study that by increasing women's double-tone protein production, we can speed up their recovery from the flu."
, it is not clear in the study what factors led to an increase in male double-tone protein production during influenza infection. Klein and his colleagues first suspected it was due to testosterone, but found that it did not appear to control double-tone protein production levels. However, they found that sex hormones independent of bitones did help protect male mice, which performed worse on influenza virus infections without it.
future, we have focused our efforts on the protective mechanisms of testosterone and the upstream factors that control the production of double-tone proteins during influenza infection. Klein said. (Source: Ma Chen, China Science Daily)