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The novel coronavirus is a strange disease.

Studies are being conducted around the world to understand how it works, and if there are mitigating factors that could predict the severity of symptoms in individuals.

So far, researchers are divided on whether smoking increases the risk of contagion or helps prevent it. Others have looked into pre-existing conditions like diabetes that are more likely to send the infected to the ICU.

A recent study is perhaps the most unexpected of all.

Professor Carlos Wambier of Brown University told The Telegraph, that baldness could be a factor in how someone responds to COVID-19.

Data since the beginning of the outbreak in Wuhan, China, in January has shown that men are more likely to die after getting coronavirus. In the UK, a report this week from Public Health England found that working-age males were twice as likely as females to die after being diagnosed with Covid-19.

Until recently, scientists have struggled to figure out why this is the case, citing factors such as lifestyle, smoking, and immune system differences between the sexes as a possible cause.

But increasingly they believe it could be because androgens – male sex hormones like testosterone – may play a part not only in hair loss, but also in boosting the ability of coronavirus to attack cells.

This suggests that treatments suppressing these hormones, like those used to fight baldness, could actually help to fend off the virus.

“We think androgens or male hormones are definitely the gateway for the virus to enter our cells,” said Professor Wambier.

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.

These studies are still in their early phases, so more work needs to be done, but the following information on COVID-19 points to the validity of the research.

To infect a cell, coronaviruses – including the novel SARS-CoV-2, which causes Covid-19 – use what is called a ‘spike’ protein that binds to the cell’s membrane, a process that is activated by an enzyme. In this case, it appears that TMPRSS2 may be that enzyme.

Scientists do not yet know if the enzyme responds in the same way to androgens in the lungs as it does in the prostate, but other evidence appears to support the potential link.

You can take a look at more studies underway to test these claims, here.

When it rains, it pours, hey chaps?

[source:telegraph]