An interesting one - apologies I think it’s probably pay walled but the gist is this. Many viruses hit women less hard than men and it may be because women can pass them down to their infants. A virus will evolve be be less severe usually if the host can pass a lot of it on.
www.newscientist.com/article/2115987-viruses-may-have-evolved-to-hit-men-hard-but-go-easy-on-women/
Two interesting quotes:
For this to be the case, though, the virus would have to be able to detect whether it’s inside a man or a woman. We don’t yet know how it would do this, but it’s not impossible, says Jansen. “There are all sorts of hormonal and other pathways that are slightly different between men and women,” he says.
The study emphasises the need to conduct clinical trials in both sexes, rather than predominantly in men as is often the case, says David Duneau, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Toulouse, France. “The parasites themselves are behaving differently in males and females, so we need to know what they do in both sexes,” he says.
Just a small reminder that Real Scientists doing Real Science are fully aware that sex and sex difference is indeed a thing ;)
And a very Merry Christmas to you all 