Why do males get more infectious diseases and females more autoimmune disorders?

Many illnesses affect men and women to the same degree. But it has been noticed by physicians and researchers over the years that males are more likely to contract infectious diseases – including more severe cases – than females and that females are at higher risk of suffering from a large variety of autoimmune diseases, in which the body’s immune system mistakenly recognizes tissues and organs as foreign and attacks them. But these doctors and scientists have not been able to provide a reason for this gender difference. Sex hormones and genetics (XY or XX chromosomes) have been given an explanation, but they are not the whole story. A new study by researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) in Beersheba looks at this question researchers by comparing the transcriptome of the immune system of female and male mice. The transcriptome is the set of all RNA molecules in one...