'Man Flu' Stories Show How We Make Women's Health All About Dudes

Whiny men might be excited by recent news stories that claim “man flu” -- the trope that men turn into bedridden drama kings at the slightest hint of a sniffle -- is real and totally justified because men have a harder time fighting off the flu. These headlines are based on a recent study that suggests estrogen could play a role in flu resistance. But the lead researcher said it's a huge "leap in logic" to say this proves anything about "man flu," and she emphasized that her study really doesn’t have much to do with guys, whiny or otherwise. “I find it so interesting that [my research] got misrepresented to be all about men,” said Sabra Klein, associate professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. What Klein and her team did find is that adding estrogen to nasal cells -- the cells typically infected by influenza -- helped stop the virus from replicating in cells from women, but not cells from men. That’s because only the female cells express estrogen receptors, which estrogen needs to bind to. It’s easy to understand why some journalists took this to mean that women, as a whole, must be better equipped to fight off the flu. After all, if women have more estrogen, and estrogen fights the flu, they must have an advantage, right? But Klein said it’s not that simple. Her team's study looked at the effects of a constant, consistent level of estro...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news