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Paucity and Disparity of Publicly Available Sex-Disaggregated Data for the COVID-19 Epidemic Hamper Evidence-Based Decision-Making
COVID-19 has joined the long list of sexually dimorphic human disorders. Higher lethality in men, evident in the first reports from China, was confirmed in the subsequent Italian outbreak. Newspapers and scientific journals commented on this finding and the preexisting conditions, biological process...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Springer US
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7781558/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33398705 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10508-020-01882-w |
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author | Kocher, Kristen Delot-Vilain, Arthur Spencer, D’Andre LoTempio, Jonathan Délot, Emmanuèle C. |
author_facet | Kocher, Kristen Delot-Vilain, Arthur Spencer, D’Andre LoTempio, Jonathan Délot, Emmanuèle C. |
author_sort | Kocher, Kristen |
collection | PubMed |
description | COVID-19 has joined the long list of sexually dimorphic human disorders. Higher lethality in men, evident in the first reports from China, was confirmed in the subsequent Italian outbreak. Newspapers and scientific journals commented on this finding and the preexisting conditions, biological processes, and behavioral differences that may underlie it. However, little appeared to be released about sex differences in severity of disease, comorbidities, rate of recovery, length of hospital stay, or number of tests performed. Systematic analysis of official websites for 20 countries and 6 US states revealed a wide disparity in sex-disaggregated data made available to the public and scholars. Only a handful reported cases by sex. None of the other characteristics, including deaths, were stratified by sex at the time. Beyond suboptimal sex disaggregation, we found a paucity of usable raw data sets and a generalized lack of standardization of captured data, making comparisons difficult. A second round of data capture in April found more complete, but even more disparate, information. Our analysis revealed a wide range of sex ratios among confirmed cases. In countries where a male bias was initially reported, the proportion of women dramatically increased in 3 weeks. Analysis also revealed a complex pattern of sex ratio variation with age. Accurate, peer-reviewed, analysis of harmonized, sex-disaggregated data for characteristics of epidemics, such as availability of testing, suspected source of infection, or comorbidities, will be critical to understand where the observed disparities come from and to generate evidence-based recommendations for decision-making by governments. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s10508-020-01882-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7781558 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Springer US |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-77815582021-01-05 Paucity and Disparity of Publicly Available Sex-Disaggregated Data for the COVID-19 Epidemic Hamper Evidence-Based Decision-Making Kocher, Kristen Delot-Vilain, Arthur Spencer, D’Andre LoTempio, Jonathan Délot, Emmanuèle C. Arch Sex Behav Original Paper COVID-19 has joined the long list of sexually dimorphic human disorders. Higher lethality in men, evident in the first reports from China, was confirmed in the subsequent Italian outbreak. Newspapers and scientific journals commented on this finding and the preexisting conditions, biological processes, and behavioral differences that may underlie it. However, little appeared to be released about sex differences in severity of disease, comorbidities, rate of recovery, length of hospital stay, or number of tests performed. Systematic analysis of official websites for 20 countries and 6 US states revealed a wide disparity in sex-disaggregated data made available to the public and scholars. Only a handful reported cases by sex. None of the other characteristics, including deaths, were stratified by sex at the time. Beyond suboptimal sex disaggregation, we found a paucity of usable raw data sets and a generalized lack of standardization of captured data, making comparisons difficult. A second round of data capture in April found more complete, but even more disparate, information. Our analysis revealed a wide range of sex ratios among confirmed cases. In countries where a male bias was initially reported, the proportion of women dramatically increased in 3 weeks. Analysis also revealed a complex pattern of sex ratio variation with age. Accurate, peer-reviewed, analysis of harmonized, sex-disaggregated data for characteristics of epidemics, such as availability of testing, suspected source of infection, or comorbidities, will be critical to understand where the observed disparities come from and to generate evidence-based recommendations for decision-making by governments. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s10508-020-01882-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Springer US 2021-01-04 2021 /pmc/articles/PMC7781558/ /pubmed/33398705 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10508-020-01882-w Text en © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2021 This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic. |
spellingShingle | Original Paper Kocher, Kristen Delot-Vilain, Arthur Spencer, D’Andre LoTempio, Jonathan Délot, Emmanuèle C. Paucity and Disparity of Publicly Available Sex-Disaggregated Data for the COVID-19 Epidemic Hamper Evidence-Based Decision-Making |
title | Paucity and Disparity of Publicly Available Sex-Disaggregated Data for the COVID-19 Epidemic Hamper Evidence-Based Decision-Making |
title_full | Paucity and Disparity of Publicly Available Sex-Disaggregated Data for the COVID-19 Epidemic Hamper Evidence-Based Decision-Making |
title_fullStr | Paucity and Disparity of Publicly Available Sex-Disaggregated Data for the COVID-19 Epidemic Hamper Evidence-Based Decision-Making |
title_full_unstemmed | Paucity and Disparity of Publicly Available Sex-Disaggregated Data for the COVID-19 Epidemic Hamper Evidence-Based Decision-Making |
title_short | Paucity and Disparity of Publicly Available Sex-Disaggregated Data for the COVID-19 Epidemic Hamper Evidence-Based Decision-Making |
title_sort | paucity and disparity of publicly available sex-disaggregated data for the covid-19 epidemic hamper evidence-based decision-making |
topic | Original Paper |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7781558/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33398705 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10508-020-01882-w |
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