Peter Eggers is a corporate attorney at Proskauer Rose law firm in the health care group, in mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, professional services arrangements and general business planning & health care fraud and abuse, licensure and enrollment.
A new study suggests that, among men, low testosterone levels in the blood are linked to more severe COVID-19.
The study contradicts widespread assumptions that higher testosterone may explain why men, on average, develop more severe COVID-19 than women do.
“The groups of men who were getting sicker were known to have lower testosterone across the board.”
Throughout the pandemic, doctors have seen evidence that men with COVID-19 fare worse, on average, than women with the infection.
One theory is that hormonal differences between men and women may make men more susceptible to severe disease. And since men have much more testosterone than women, some scientists have speculated that high levels of testosterone may be to blame.
I do not think that the waiver will help us overcoming the current vaccine shortage. The first problem is that there is not enough infrastructure – manufacturing facilities, equipment, personnel – to expand vaccine production to the levels it should be at to meet pandemic demand. In this context, altering the intellectual property status quo does little – Ana Santos Rutschman, assistant professor at the Saint Louis University School of Law pointed out in a conversation with Lénárd Sándor, researcher at the National University of Public Service.
Ana Santos RUTSCHMAN is assistant professor at the Saint Louis University School of Law. She has published and presented widely on topics related to health law, food and drug regulation, intellectual property related to vaccines and other biotechnologies, innovation in the life sciences, and law and technology. She was a part of the COVID-19 Innovation Committee for the 2020 Biden presidential campaign. Her book, Vaccines as Tech
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IMAGE: A new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests that, among men, low testosterone levels in the blood are linked to more severe COVID-19. The study. view more
Credit: SARA MOSER
Throughout the pandemic, doctors have seen evidence that men with COVID-19 fare worse, on average, than women with the infection. One theory is that hormonal differences between men and women may make men more susceptible to severe disease. And since men have much more testosterone than women, some scientists have speculated that high levels of testosterone may be to blame.
But a new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests that, among men, the opposite may be true: that low testosterone levels in the blood are linked to more severe disease. The study could not prove that low testosterone is a cause of severe COVID-19; low levels could simply serve as a marker of some other causal factors. Still, the researchers ur