C T Online Desk: Experts have suggested that women may be more vulnerable to extreme high temperatures – such as the heat waves searing Europe – than males.
According to the heatwave plan for England, those at high risk include those over 75, babies, young children, people with severe physical or mental illness and females.
The document does not explain why females are on the list, The Guardian reports, but the UK Health Security Agency pointed to a study in the Netherlands that researched mortality after heat waves and found that elderly women are at higher risk than men.
The researchers noted that the results were not simply down to age.
“When equal ages were considered, mortality rates were still 15% higher for females,” the research team said of their analysis of data from the 2003 heat wave in France.
Another study by German and Dutch researchers, looking at 23 years of temperature data from the Netherlands along with daily mortality rates, also found differences between the sexes.
“Heat-related mortality was higher in females than in males, especially in the oldest age group (≥ 80 years) under extreme heat,” The Guardian quoted them as saying.
The team added that its findings did not seem to be down to the elderly being more vulnerable to heat and women generally living longer than men.
An author of the study, Hein Daanen, who is a professor of exercise physiology at VU University in Amsterdam told The Guardian that the team speculated that the reduced sweat production in females may play a role.
