University of Pittsburgh researchers working with the NIH to help women who are more susceptible to the flu
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - There have been libraries of books written about the difference between women and men and now, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh are embarking on a new study to help find treatments to help women who are more susceptible to the flu.
The National Institutes of Health is putting nearly $4 million into this study to hopefully improve treatments.
You could call it an unexpected benefit of the COVID-19 pandemic - having so many patients to study.
"They found women between the ages of about 18 to 40-45," said Dr. Jason Shoemaker of the Pitt Swanson School of Engineering. "[They] had just really high hospitalization rates compared to the rest of the population, compared to men, compared to other age groups for females as well."
The result also had a real-world theory, according to Dr. Shoemaker, believing that there does exist some potential gender bias depending on the strain of the flu.
Dr. Shoemaker and his colleagues at Pitt, along with counterparts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will now try to build on a decade of studies that looked at hormones as a reason and a possible solution.
"They've shown that these estrogens seem to change how your lung immune response behaves," he explained.
He said that they focus on their look and on studies of hormone replacement therapies.
"They found potential evidence that someone said that receiving HRT hormone placement therapy is at a lower risk of severe infection from influenza than someone who is not," Dr. Shoemaker said.
So, what the NIH study is setting out to do is identify the molecules or biological pathways that are the conduits to relief.
"In that way, we can start designing what we think would be more like set specific drug targets or set specific treatments, if you will," he said.
The goal is to prevent the severity of the flu in women.
While they're not yet looking for human volunteers, they are working with animals and human cells.
Human trials could still be 10 years down the road.