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. 2016 Feb 18;12(2):e1005374.
doi: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1005374. eCollection 2016 Feb.

SeXX Matters in Infectious Disease Pathogenesis

Landon G vom Steeg  1 , Sabra L Klein  1
Affiliations

SeXX Matters in Infectious Disease Pathogenesis

Landon G vom Steeg et al. PLoS Pathog. .
No abstract available

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Sex differences in the intensity (i.e., pathogen load), prevalence (i.e., proportion of population with disease), incidence (i.e., new cases of disease), and severity (i.e., hospitalization or progression of disease state) of disease following microbial infections in humans.
Fig 2
Fig 2. The hypothesized relationship between host damage and the host immune response following infection, as presented in the context of the damage-response framework [17].
When an immune response is “weak” (i.e., not sufficient to clear a pathogen), the damage caused by infection is high, and when an immune response is too “strong” (i.e., excessive enough to cause tissue damage), the damage caused by infection can also be high. Based on the literature presented, we hypothesize that a male bias in disease risk may be observed when weak immune responses underlie high levels of host damage and a female bias in disease risk may be observed when strong immune responses contribute to host damage. Several host factors, including sex chromosomal complement, concentrations of sex hormones, and behaviors can contribute to biases in the outcome of infection.
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References

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