SCIENCE has confirmed what men around the world have always known to be true: the man cold is real.
When the dreaded bug strikes, women have a much stronger immune response to the virus than men, according to Queensland researchers.
Led by Professor John Upham from the University of Queensland's school of medicine, the five-member research team established that gender was a factor in how the immune system reacts to rhinoviruses, the viruses that usually cause the common cold.
Significantly, these differences disappear after women reach menopause - indicating they are probably regulated by sex hormones.
''The way nature has put us together has been done to keep the female of the species alive as a survival thing,'' Professor Upham said. ''Women bear the children, where as men are dispensable.''
He said it was the first time gender had been identified as a factor in the immune response to rhinoviruses but that sex hormones were known to influence the response to other viruses.
Researchers from the University of Queensland and Princess Alexandra Hospital made the discovery after studying how people with asthma respond to rhinoviruses - which often results in hospitalisation.
''While the rhinoviruses for healthy people can be a trivial thing and just an excuse to lie in bed and not do the jobs at home, if you've got asthma it can be very serious,'' he said.
''So we were trying to find a better way to treat or prevent rhinovirus infections in people with asthma.''
In the process the researchers noticed that within their study group of healthy people there was a noticeable difference in the male and female responses to the cold viruses for those participants aged under 50.
''The biology is telling us something that female hormones are having a beneficial effect on the immune system, so we are going to investigate if there is a way of using that insight to develop a vaccine,'' Professor Upham said.
He said the findings, which have been published in the journal Respiratory Research, could also be applied more broadly, including treating people over 50 who were battling with other viral infections.