One explanation for this gap is that higher levels of oestrogen and progesterone in women might be protecting them in some way. These hormones don’t just make the immune system stronger, but also more flexible, according to Sabine Oertelt-Prigione, a researcher at the Institute of Gender in Medicine at the Charité University Hospital in Berlin. ‘This is related to the fact that women can bear children,’ she explains. A pregnancy is the same as foreign tissue growing inside a woman’s body that, if her immune system was in the wrong gear, would be rejected.
