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A finding of sex similarities rather than differences in COVID-19 outcomes

Nature volume 597, pages E7–E9 (2021)Cite this article

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Matters Arising to this article was published on 22 September 2021

The Original Article was published on 26 August 2020

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arising from T. Takahashi et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2700-3 (2020)

The sex disparity in COVID-19 mortality varies widely and is of uncertain origin. In their recent Article, Takahashi et al.1 assess immune phenotype in a sample of patients with COVID-19 and conclude that the “immune landscape in COVID-19 patients is considerably different between the sexes”, warranting different vaccine and therapeutic regimes for men and women—a claim that was disseminated widely following the publication2. Here we argue that these inferences are not supported by their findings and that the study does not demonstrate that biological sex explains COVID-19 outcomes among patients. The study overstates its findings and factors beyond innate sex are treated superficially in analysing the causes of gender or sex disparities in COVID-19 disease outcomes.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Women and Gender Studies Program, University of Southern Maine, Portland, ME, USA

    Heather Shattuck-Heidorn

  2. Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Heather Shattuck-Heidorn & Sarah S. Richardson

  3. Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    Ann Caroline Danielsen & Joseph Dov Bruch

  4. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA

    Annika Gompers

  5. Department of Philosophy, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Helen Zhao

  6. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Marion Boulicault

  7. Department of the History of Science, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Jamie Marsella & Sarah S. Richardson

Authors
  1. Heather Shattuck-Heidorn
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  2. Ann Caroline Danielsen
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  8. Sarah S. Richardson
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Contributions

All authors contributed to conceptualization and design. H.S.H., A.G., A.C.D., J.D.B. and S.S.R. performed the analysis. H.S.H. and S.R. drafted the manuscript, and all authors contributed to revisions and editing.

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Correspondence to Heather Shattuck-Heidorn.

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Shattuck-Heidorn, H., Danielsen, A.C., Gompers, A. et al. A finding of sex similarities rather than differences in COVID-19 outcomes. Nature 597, E7–E9 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03644-7

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