Coronavirus disease 2019 and gender-related mortality in European countries: A meta-analysis

• Published in: Maturitas Vol. 141; pp. 59 - 62
• Main Authors: Pérez-López, Faustino R., Tajada, Mauricio, Savirón-Cornudella, Ricardo, Sánchez-Prieto, Manuel, Chedraui, Peter, Terán, Enrique
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ireland Elsevier B.V 01-11-2020
• Subjects: Betacoronavirus; Coronavirus 2019; Coronavirus Infections - mortality; COVID-19; Europe - epidemiology; Fatalities; Female; Gender; Global health 50/50; Humans; Male; Mortality; Pandemics; Pneumonia, Viral - mortality; SARS-CoV-2; Sex Distribution; Europe; COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; Mortality; Coronavirus 2019; Fatalities; Gender; Global health 50/50
• DOI: 10.1016/j.maturitas.2020.06.017
• EISSN: 1873-4111
• ISSN: 0378-5122

•The article presents a meta-analysis of COVID-19-related mortality data from the Global Health 50/50 repository.•COVID-19-related mortality is higher in European men than in European women.•The male–female mortality risk ratio is 1.60 (95 % CI 1.53, 1.68).
To examine mortality rates related to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) by gender among European countries.
PubMed, preprint medRxiv and bioRxiv repositories, and Google were searched for the terms COVID-19, mortality rates, gender, and Europe. Only Google provided a website with appropriate information. COVID-19 cases and deaths from European countries were extracted by gender from the Global Health 50/50 repository up to May 23, 2020. Extracted data included country, the total number of COVID-19 cases and the number of related deaths by gender. Random effects models with the inverse variance method were used for meta-analyses. Results are reported as death risk ratios (RRs).
We identified information from 23 European countries that reported separately by gender mortality rates related to COVID-19. The sample comprised 484,919 men and 605,229 women positive for COVID-19. The mortality rate was significantly higher in men than in women (risk ratio = 1.60, 95 % confidence interval [CI] 1.53, 1.68). The trend was similar when countries reporting < 5000, or < 10,000 cases were excluded from the analysis (RR = 1.60, 95 % CI 1.52, 1.69 and RR = 1.68; CI 1.62, 1.76, respectively).
In Europe, the new zoonotic coronavirus causes significantly more deaths in men than in women.