Are Bald Men More Susceptible To Coronavirus?

NEW YORK (VINnews) — Epidemiologists worldwide have noticed that men and bald men in particular suffer worse symptoms of COVID-19 than women but new research may explain this phenomenon, according to Forbes.com

Brown University researchers targeted androgens, the group of hormones which causes hair loss in men. The researchers claim that these androgens are linked to severe cases of COVID-19 and dubbed their discovery the “Gabrin Sign,” after Dr. Frank Gabrin, the first doctor to die of COVID-19 in the United States, who was bald.

Lead author Dr. Carlos Wambier said, “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.”

Wambier and his team conducted two studies in Spain. In one study, 79 per cent of the men suffering with Covid-19 in three Madrid hospitals were bald. The study of 122 patients, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, followed an earlier piece of work among 41 patients in Spanish hospitals, which found 71 per cent were bald. The background rate of baldness in white men of a similar age to the patients studied is between 31-53 per cent. A similar correlation was found in the study among the smaller numbers of women with hair loss linked to androgens.

The study that was published in the American Academy of Dermatology also pondered whether females taking birth control pills which bind progestin to androgen receptors or who have other medical conditions which increase androgen are also at increased risk of infection.

Wambier and his colleagues believe if their theory is correct, anti-androgen therapy could be used as a COVID-19 treatment.

Prostate cancer treatments also involve anti-androgen treatments since in the prostate, the hormones stimulate an enzyme that boosts cancerous growth. A study from Veneto, Italy, of 9,280 patients found that men with prostate cancer who were on androgen-deprivation therapy – drugs that cut testosterone levels – were only a quarter as likely to contract Covid-19 as men with the disease who were on other treatments.

Wambier’s study concludes that, “A vaccine might ultimately be found for SARS-CoV-2; however, if a vaccine is not found or found to be ineffective, androgen suppression as a prophylactic treatment could reduce Covid-19 disease burden.”