system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Do "larger" people have an advantage combating a viral or bacterial infection?

All else being equal, aside from height/weight (but the same BMI) would you expect someone shorter than average or taller than average to get over say, a viral infection, at a different pace than an average person?

Say you have:

A 5'4", 127lb male ("smaller")

A 5'10", 153lb male ("average")

A 6'4", 180lb male ("larger")

All the same BMI, with identical immune systems, diets, environmental factors, and have proportional bodies, would the larger specimen be able to fight the virus 40% quicker than the smaller one? Or feel side effects proportionately *less* than the smaller one? Etc?

Or does the virus scale itself to the size of the human, and they can expect identical experiences the duration of infection?


I apologize if this is a stupid question but I wonder if there's some how an almost mechanical advantage to a larger person in fighting disease.

Thank you in advance for your consideration and/or any directions you can point me to for my own edification.
gpt
Not a stupid question but the short answer is no. Larger people do not have an inherent advantage fighting infection.

The immune system runs off of a series of checkpoints, viral particles (which do not change size depending on host) have to picked up by certain cell types and presented to others in the right place at the right time with the right signals etc to mount an immune response. This is not affected by size and will occur at a similar rate, all else being equal, in a small vs large person.

This breaks down when looking at extremes, where a persons extremely large/small weight starts to affect their ability to resist/recover from an infection. Also in young children infants, where a small size can mean a much lower energy reserve to fight the infection.

This is still a more generalist answer, there will be differences depending on the type of infection. A larger person will have larger airways which will reduce the severity of some respiratory infection symptoms, for example.