Could Lower Testosterone in Older Men Explain Higher COVID-19 Morbidity and Mortalities?
2022
Luis M. Montaño | Bettina Sommer | Héctor Solís-Chagoyán | Bianca S. Romero-Martínez | Arnoldo Aquino-Gálvez | Juan C. Gomez-Verjan | Eduardo Calixto | Georgina González-Avila | Edgar Flores-Soto
The health scourge imposed on humanity by the COVID-19 pandemic seems not to recede. This fact warrants refined and novel ideas analyzing different aspects of the illness. One such aspect is related to the observation that most COVID-19 casualties were older males, a tendency also noticed in the epidemics of SARS-CoV in 2003 and the Middle East respiratory syndrome in 2012. This gender-related difference in the COVID-19 death toll might be directly involved with testosterone (TEST) and its plasmatic concentration in men. TEST has been demonstrated to provide men with anti-inflammatory and immunological advantages. As the plasmatic concentration of this androgen decreases with age, the health benefit it confers also diminishes. Low plasmatic levels of TEST can be determinant in the infection’s outcome and might be related to a dysfunctional cell Ca<sup>2+</sup> homeostasis. Not only does TEST modulate the activity of diverse proteins that regulate cellular calcium concentrations, but these proteins have also been proven to be necessary for the replication of many viruses. Therefore, we discuss herein how TEST regulates different Ca<sup>2+</sup>-handling proteins in healthy tissues and propose how low TEST concentrations might facilitate the replication of the SARS-CoV-2 virus through the lack of modulation of the mechanisms that regulate intracellular Ca<sup>2+</sup> concentrations.
Show more [+] Less [-]AGROVOC Keywords
Bibliographic information
This bibliographic record has been provided by Directory of Open Access Journals
