A search to show that biological sex is important in the immune system

She eventually earned a postdoctoral position in the lab of one of her dissertation committee members. And since then, as she established her own lab at the university’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, she has devoted herself to the subject of sex—as defined by the biological characteristics of our sex chromosomes, sex hormones, and reproductive tissues. It actually affects the immune response.

Through studies in animal models and humans, Klein and others have shown how and why male and female immune systems respond to the flu virus, HIV, and some cancer treatments, and why most women have greater protection from vaccines but more severe asthma and immune system disorders. (a known but not specifically observed difference in immunity). “Work from her lab has been instrumental in advancing our understanding of vaccine responses and immune function in men and women,” said immunologist Dawn Newcomb of Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. (When referring to people in this article, “male” is shorthand for people with XY chromosomes, genitalia and testicles, and testosterone-dominated puberty, and “female” for people with XX chromosomes and genitalia, and with estrogen. going through precocious puberty.)

Through her research, as well as her prodigious energy organizing symposia and meetings, Klein helped pioneer the field of immunology, where gender differences were thought to be irrelevant. Historically, most trials have enrolled only men, resulting in unquantified—and possibly incalculable—consequences for public health and medicine. The practice, for example, has led to women being denied potentially life-saving HIV treatment and suffering worse side effects from drugs and vaccines given the same doses as men.

Men and women do not get infectious or autoimmune diseases in the same way. Women are nine times more likely to develop lupus than men, and are hospitalized at higher rates for some types of the flu. Meanwhile, men are more likely to develop tuberculosis and die from Covid-19 than women.

In the year In the 1990s, scientists often attributed such differences to biological differences in the immune system rather than gender – norms, roles, relationships, behaviors and other sociocultural factors.

For example, three times as many women as men have multiple sclerosis, but until the 1990s, immunologists ignored the idea that this disparity might have a biological basis, says Rhonda Voskuhl, a neuroimmunologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “People say, ‘Oh, the women complain more — they’re stupid,'” Voskuhl said. “You had to convince people that it wasn’t all personal or environmental, but basic biology. So it was an uphill battle.”

Rose Morton

Despite the historical practice of “bikini therapy”—the notion that there isn’t much difference between the sexes other than the parts you fit in a bikini—we now know you’re looking at your metabolism, heart, or immune system. There are biological gender differences and sociocultural gender differences. And both play a role in susceptibility to disease. For example, men are twice as likely to develop tuberculosis as women—probably due to differences in their immune systems and partly because men smoke and work in mines or construction. Work that exposes you to toxic substances, which can damage the immune system of the lungs.

How to tease out gender and sexuality effects? “Gender is a social construct that we associate with humans, so animals don’t have gender,” says Chiren Hunter, associate director of basic and translational research at the US National Institutes of Health’s Office of Research. Women’s health. Seeing similar results in animals and humans is a good starting point to determine whether the immune response is modulated by sex.