{"id":1710,"date":"2021-12-01T09:03:24","date_gmt":"2021-12-01T14:03:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/?p=1710"},"modified":"2021-12-01T09:03:24","modified_gmt":"2021-12-01T14:03:24","slug":"are-rates-of-myocarditis-higher-among-young-men-if-so-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/?p=1710","title":{"rendered":"Are rates of myocarditis higher among young men? If so, why?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Question:<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0I heard that men between 18-35 have a higher rate of heart complications, true or false. If true, why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Answer:<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0I&#8217;m going to narrow your question a bit to focus on one heart complication&#8211; myocarditis&#8211; which is associated with COVID, both infection and vaccination.\u00a0 Myocarditis, or\u00a0inflammation\u00a0of the heart muscle, is a rare complication usually caused by a viral infection (e.g. not just COVID, but other viral infections too).\u00a0 It is\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/rarediseases.org\/rare-diseases\/myocarditis\/\">most frequently diagnosed<\/a>\u00a0in young adults and is more common in men than women.\u00a0 When it comes to COVID vaccination, myocarditis has been\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cidrap.umn.edu\/news-perspective\/2021\/10\/covid-vaccine-related-myocarditis-rare-usually-mild-studies-say\">found to be a rare, usually mild<\/a>\u00a0side effect of COVID mRNA vaccinations.\u00a0 To put &#8220;rare risk&#8221; in perspective, one\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nejm.org\/doi\/full\/10.1056\/NEJMoa2109730\">recent study<\/a>\u00a0out of Israel published in the\u00a0<em>New England Journal of Medicine<\/em>\u00a0found &#8220;a rate of approximately 1 per 26,000 males and 1 per 218,000 females after the second vaccine dose, with the highest risk again among young male recipients.&#8221;\u00a0 Meanwhile, SARS-CoV-2 is associated with much higher risk of myocarditis;\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nejm.org\/doi\/full\/10.1056\/NEJMoa2110475\">another recent study<\/a>\u00a0published in\u00a0<em>NEJM<\/em>\u00a0found the relative risk of COVID-assicated myocarditis to be much higher than the risk in the general population and much higher than the risk associated\u00a0with mRNA vaccination &#8220;(risk ratio, 18.28; 95% CI, 3.95 to 25.12; risk difference, 11.0 events per 100,000 persons; 95% CI, 5.6 to 15.8) and of additional serious adverse events, including pericarditis, arrhythmia, deep-vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, myocardial infarction, intracranial hemorrhage, and thrombocytopenia.&#8221;\u00a0 Scientists still aren&#8217;t sure why myocarditis incidence is more frequent among young men.\u00a0\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC4136454\/\">One hypothesis\u00a0<\/a>is that sex hormones, including testosterone, differentially impact the immune system&#8217;s reaction to infection.\u00a0 In summation, yes, young men experience higher rates of myocarditis; we aren&#8217;t sure why, but it may be due to the interplay of sex hormones and the immune system.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Question:\u00a0I heard that men between 18-35 have a higher rate of heart complications, true or false. If true, why? Answer:\u00a0I&#8217;m going to narrow your question a bit to focus on one heart complication&#8211; myocarditis&#8211; which is associated with COVID, both infection and vaccination.\u00a0 Myocarditis, or\u00a0inflammation\u00a0of the heart muscle, is a rare complication usually caused by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1711,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[85,60,64],"tags":[250,154],"class_list":["post-1710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-children","category-risk","category-vaccines","tag-myocarditis","tag-side-effects","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/covidqanda.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/pexels-photo-4386467.jpeg?fit=867%2C1300&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1710"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1712,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1710\/revisions\/1712"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}