Sex meets immunology

Have you ever wondered how the immune system differs in men versus women?

For instance, did you know that:

• Men get more viral, bacterial, parasitic and fungal infections, for example HIV and tuberculosis
• Women are more prone to develop autoimmune diseases. For example, for an autoimmune disease called lupus, 9 out of 10 patients are women
• Women have stronger antibody responses to vaccination, and antibody responses to seasonal influenza vaccines are consistently at least twice as strong in women than men
• Men show an almost twofold higher risk of death from malignant cancer than women.

In this new episode Alex and Merel discuss potential explanations for these facts, and the role for the immune system in these differences between men and women.

In this episode we try to speak to the broad diversity of sex and gender in humans where possible and where the existing research permits. We hope to see increasing immunology research that captures this diversity in the future!