TORONTO, May 20 (UPI) -- Men hospitalized with pneumonia often are sicker than women and have a higher risk of dying within a year, University of Pittsburgh researchers say.
The researchers evaluated data from 1,136 men and 1,047 women with symptoms of pneumonia who were treated at 28 U.S. hospital emergency departments.
They adjusted for age, race, tobacco use, other demographic characteristics, chronic health conditions, health behaviors and levels of treatment, and found men had a 30 percent higher risk of death.
"The gender disparity on aggressiveness of hospital care is appropriate, given that men tended to be significantly sicker than women," first author Michael Reade, formerly at Pitt and now at the University of Melbourne.
"Even so, men had a 30 percent higher risk of death, and the social factors we examined were not sufficient to explain the differences we observed."
The study is being presented at the 104th International Conference of the American Thoracic Society in Toronto.
