Testosterone has been shown to reduce the risk of asthma

2017/11/28 Galarraga Aiestaran, Ana - Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Medikuntza

Why do women have twice the risk of asthma than men? According to a study published by Cell Reports, testosterone may be the key. In fact, they have shown that it interferes in the functioning of an immune cell that causes the intake and formation of mucus in the lungs.

In fact, at puberty boys have asthma 1.5 times more than girls. From adolescence, however, the trend changes and women suffer twice as much asthma as men. In view of this, researchers suspected the influence of sex hormones. It focused on a lymphoid cell directly related to asthma symptoms, the ILC2 cell, and analyzed the influence of hormones (estrogen and progesterone) and testosterone produced in the ovaries. They have seen that testosterone prevents the formation of cytokines, which hinders the mechanism that produces the symptoms of asthma.