Are bald men more likely to get a severe form of COVID-19?
Covid-19 and bald men
It seems that men, especially bald ones, are more severely affected by Covid-19 than women. Researchers at Brown University believe that one of the causes is androgens, the group of hormones that cause baldness in men.
Androgen hormones have a causal link to severe cases of Covid-19, the researchers concluded, according to Forbes. They suggested that the discovery should be named “Sign of Gabrin” after the first US doctor to die of Covi-19. Dr. Frank Gabrin had baldness.
“We think androgens or male hormones are definitely the gateway for the virus to enter our cells. We really think baldness is a perfect predictor of severity” said the main author of the study, Carlos Wambier.
Wambier and his team conducted two studies in Spain. The results of one of them, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, show that 79% of the 122 men tested positive for Covid-19 and hospitalized in three hospitals in Madrid had baldness. A separate study of 41 patients in Spain showed that 71% of them had baldness.
As we have been informed, the researchers did not control for age in these studies, but age also puts more people at risk of severe coronavirus symptoms as well as hair loss. The team of scientists continues the research, and Wambier and colleagues believe that if the theory is correct, then anti-androgen treatment can be used against Covid-19. For sure, more research is needed.
” If a vaccine is not found or found to be ineffective, androgen suppression as a prophylactic treatment could reduce Covid-19 disease burden.”, the study said.
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Sources:
Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology
