Men really do have an excuse for supposedly being wimpy about coughs and colds - their immune systems are not as strong as women's, research suggests.
A Canadian study indicates that the female sex hormone oestrogen gives women's immune systems added bite at fighting off infection.
Oestrogen seems to counter an enzyme which blocks the inflammatory process.
The McGill University study appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers focused on an enzyme called Caspase-12, which is known to put a brake on the inflammatory process, the body's first line of defence against harmful invaders such as bacteria and viruses.
They worked on mice that lacked the Caspase-12 gene, and were thus extremely resistant to infection.
The human Caspase-12 gene was implanted into a group of male and female mice, but only the males became more prone to infection.
Full story here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8047321.stm
1 comment:
This is a very interesting article, thank you very much for posting it.
It seems there are more and more studies being done that tend to support the evidence of female genetic superiority.
If you enjoy reading upon these types of studies, the Geneticist, Bryan Sykes, has written a few books on the history of genetic evolution, one of which focuses on the genetic inferiority of the Y chromosome. It's a fairly dense read but it is quite interesting.
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