A study conducted in Canada reveals that women’s immunity system is considerable stronger than men’s. The research indicates that the female sex hormone estrogen gives women’s immune systems an added advantage to help fight bacterial and viral infections. This is the McGill University study, which appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
An enzyme called Caspase-12 halts the inflammatory process, which is the body’s first line of defense against harmful invaders such as bacteria and viruses. The study revealed that mice that lacked the Caspase-12 gene, and were thus extremely resistant to infection.
The researchers implanted the human Caspase-12 gene into a group of male and female mice. The study found that only the male mice became more prone to infection. This led to the conclusion that estrogen produced by the female mice blocked the expression of the human Caspase-12 gene.
The high point of the study was the fact that the researchers were also able to locate the precise place where estrogen binds to the gene and blocks its activity. Lead researcher Dr Maya Saleh said: “These results demonstrate that women have a more powerful inflammatory response than men.”
Since the experiment made use of human genes, the researchers are confident that their work will be applicable to humans. The researchers believe that because of the women’s role of bearing and nurturing their young may have lead to the evolution of a more robust immune system.
Dr Leslie Knapp, of the University of Cambridge, said there was a substantial body of evidence to show that women were better at fighting infections than men.
She said: “Women are well known to be able to respond more robustly to infections, and to recover more quickly than men.
“In evolutionary terms it only takes one male to reproduce with lots of females, but females are much more important in terms of producing offspring.”
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