Males, especially young ones, are the weaker sex!

According to a new Australian study, males, especially young ones are the weaker sex.

The researchers arrived at this conclusion after looking at under-18 accident and emergency visits across Australia and New Zealand over a 12 month period.

The research revealed that boys are more prone to becoming seriously ill or injured, and according to the study of the 350,000 children taken to the hospital in the study period, 45% were girls - the rest were boys.

Researcher Dr Jason Acworth says the disparity could not be explained away as "boys being boys'' because even when it was just related to boys being more likely to injure themselves, they still made up a greater proportion.

Dr Acworth says boys are over-represented when it comes to injuries and even when that was factored for, they still made up a greater proportion - 55% as against 45% and the view was that males are the weaker sex.

Dr Acworth, the study's lead author, from the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Royal Children's Hospital in Brisbane, included all child emergency room visits during 2004 across 11 paediatric and general hospitals who are part of a research network called the Paediatric Research in Emergency Departments International Collaborative (PREDICT).

The study also showed the additional dangers faced by children in their first years of life as the average age of all presentations was 4.6 years and most of the children were in the pre-school age group.

Top of the list as the most common causes for emergency room visits were acute gastroenteritis, acute viral illness and upper respiratory tract infections.

The presentations peaked in the late winter and early spring and almost 70% of the emergency cases occurred from midday to midnight.

In Australia, 3% of presentations were Aboriginal children, while in New Zealand 44% were Maori or Pacific Islander - most of the paediatric patients were able to be sent home from the ED, and deaths were very rare.

The PREDICT collaborative is a network of all tertiary paediatric emergency centres and larger mixed EDs that have taken a lead role in the development of the specialty of paediatric emergency medicine.

Participating hospitals were Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne, Princess Margaret Hospital in Perth, Children's Hospital at Westmead in Sydney, Women's and Children's Hospital in Adelaide, Mater Children's Hospital in Brisbane, Starship Hospital in Auckland, Sydney Children's Hospital, Royal Children's Hospital in Brisbane, Sunshine Hospital in Melbourne, Kidz First Hospital in Auckland, and John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle.

The study is published in Emergency Medicine Australasia, the journal of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine.