Why Men Recover From the Flu Faster Than Women
For most people, getting the flu means coughing, runny noses, sore throats, fever, muscle pain, fatigue and just feeling awful overall.
But how quickly you can recover from the flu may depend on your gender.
According to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, past studies show that women recover from the flu slower than men, even when they have the same levels of the influenza virus in their bodies.
Using experiments on live mice and human cells taken from men with the flu virus, a team of scientists have found a possible reason why men recover faster.
They say it’s because men create more of an important lung-healing protein – called amphiregulin – than women.
The researchers found that male mice recovered quicker than the females and male mice who had low amounts of the protein.
The study was recently published in the journal, Biology of Sex Differences.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 3 - 10 percent of Americans catch the flu every year. It estimates that as many as 710,000 Americans are taken to hospital each year as a result of the flu, and 12,000 - 56,000 die from it. Less than half of all Americans receive a flu vaccination each year.
