Category: Gender

Categories : GenderTags :

Researchers Discover New Strength-boosting Mechanism in Androgens

On By ModernMedia
Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash

Researchers at Leipzig University’s Faculty of Medicine and Shandong University in China have discovered a new mechanism that is used by a key androgen essential for muscle and bone function. The findings could lead to the development of new drugs with fewer side effects, for use in applications such as strengthening the muscles of immobile patients. The researchers have published their findings in the prestigious journal Cell.

The most powerful of the androgens is called 5α-dihydrotestosterone (5α-DHT). Among other things, it is essential for bone and muscle function and for the development of secondary male sexual characteristics during puberty. As a driver of bone and muscle formation, 5α-DHT increases bone mineral density and promotes skeletal muscle growth to increase muscle strength. 

In this international study, the scientists were able to show that one of the adhesion G protein- coupled receptors – GPR133 – is activated by the androgenic steroid hormone 5α-DHT.

“This activation can, among other things, increase the contractile force of skeletal muscles, and our study also uses a newly developed, potent activator of this receptor to specifically trigger this effect,” says Professor Ines Liebscher, Professor of Signal Transduction at Leipzig University and co-leader of the study.

Increasing muscle strength with the chance of significantly fewer negative effects of androgens

Activation of GPR133 by the novel agonist AP503 increases muscle strength without triggering a specific negative effect that is otherwise observed when androgens are administered. For example, increased and prolonged exposure to testosterone can promote the development of prostate cancer, as evidenced by tissue changes in the prostate in mice after only two weeks of androgen administration. This side effect has not yet been observed with AP503.

In addition, the current study uses structural biology methods to elucidate the molecular basis of the interaction between the steroid hormone, the substance AP503 and GPR133. This will allow the activator to be specifically optimised and further developed into a new therapeutic agent. This could lead to the development of new muscle-strengthening drugs with a lower side-effect profile.

This publication is the result of a long-standing and successful collaboration between the Rudolf Schönheimer Institute of Biochemistry and the research group of Professor Jin-Peng Sun at Shandong University in China. The researchers are currently working on several follow-up studies to further investigate the use of AP503 in disease processes and the role of GPR133 in the organism. Here the data were analysed in animal models. Further studies are needed to investigate the applicability of the findings to humans.

Source: Universität Leipzig

Categories : Gender NeurologyTags :

Sex Differences in Brain Structure Present at Birth

On By ModernMedia
Photo by Chayene Rafaela on Unsplash

Sex differences in brain structure are present from birth, research from the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge has shown.

While male brains tended to be greater in volume than female brains, when adjusted for total brain volume, female infants on average had significantly more grey matter, while male infants on average had significantly more white matter in their brains.

Grey matter is made up of neuron cell bodies and dendrites and is responsible for processing and interpreting information, such as sensation, perception, learning, speech, and cognition.  White matter is made up of axons, which are long nerve fibres that connect neurons together from different parts of the brain. 

Yumnah Khan, a PhD student at the Autism Research Centre, who led the study, said: “Our study settles an age-old question of whether male and female brains differ at birth. We know there are differences in the brains of older children and adults, but our findings show that they are already present in the earliest days of life.

“Because these sex differences are evident so soon after birth, they might in part reflect biological sex differences during prenatal brain development, which then interact with environmental experiences over time to shape further sex differences in the brain.”

One problem that has plagued past research in this area is sample size. The Cambridge team tackled this by analysing data from the Developing Human Connectome Project, where infants receive an MRI brain scan soon after birth. Having over 500 newborn babies in the study means that, statistically, the sample is ideal for detecting sex differences if they are present.

A second problem is whether any observed sex differences could be due to other factors, such as differences in body size.  The Cambridge team found that, on average, male infants had significantly larger brain volumes than did females, and this was true even after sex differences in birth weight were taken into account.

After taking this difference in total brain volume into account, at a regional level, females on average showed larger volumes in grey matter areas related to memory and emotional regulation, while males on average had larger volumes in grey matter areas involved in sensory processing and motor control.

The findings of the study, the largest to date to investigate this question, are published in the journal Biology of Sex Differences.

Dr Alex Tsompanidis who supervised the study, said: “This is the largest such study to date, and we took additional factors into account, such as birth weight, to ensure that these differences are specific to the brain and not due to general size differences between the sexes.

“To understand why males and females show differences in their relative grey and white matter volume, we are now studying the conditions of the prenatal environment, using population birth records, as well as in vitro cellular models of the developing brain. This will help us compare the progression of male and female pregnancies and determine if specific biological factors, such as hormones or the placenta, contribute to the differences we see in the brain.”

The researchers stress that the differences between males and females are average differences.

Dr Carrie Allison, Deputy Director of the Autism Research Centre, said: “The differences we see do not apply to all males or all females, but are only seen when you compare groups of males and females together. There is a lot a variation within, and a lot of overlap between, each group.”  

Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, Director of the Autism Research Centre, added: “These differences do not imply the brains of males and females are better or worse. It’s just one example of neurodiversity. This research may be helpful in understanding other kinds of neurodiversity, such as the brain in children who are later diagnosed as autistic, since this is diagnosed more often in males.”

The research was funded by Cambridge University Development and Research, Trinity College, Cambridge, the Cambridge Trust, and the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative.

Reference
Khan, Y.T., Tsompanidis, A., Radecki, M.A. et al. Sex differences in human brain structure at birth. Biol Sex Differ; 17 Oct 2024; DOI: 10.1186/s13293-024-00657-5

Republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Source: University of Cambridge

Categories : Gender Pain ManagementTags :

Men and Women Use Different Biological Systems to Reduce Pain

On By ModernMedia
Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash

In a new study evaluating meditation for chronic lower back pain, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have discovered that men and women utilise different biological systems to relieve pain. While men relieve pain by releasing endogenous opioids, the body’s natural painkillers, women rely instead on other, non-opioid based pathways. The study was published in PNAS Nexus.

Synthetic opioid drugs, such as morphine and fentanyl, are the most powerful class of painkilling drugs available. Women are known to respond poorly to opioid therapies, which use synthetic opioid molecules to bind to the same receptors as naturally-occurring endogenous opioids. This aspect of opioid drugs helps explain why they are so powerful as painkillers, but also why they carry a significant risk of dependence and addiction.

“Dependence develops because people start taking more opioids when their original dosage stops working,” said Fadel Zeidan, PhD, professor of anaesthesiology and Endowed Professor in Empathy and Compassion Research at UC San Diego Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion. “Although speculative, our findings suggest that maybe one reason that females are more likely to become addicted to opioids is that they’re biologically less responsive to them and need to take more to experience any pain relief.”

The study combined data from two clinical trials involving a total of 98 participants, including both healthy individuals and those diagnosed with chronic lower back pain. Participants underwent a meditation training program, then practiced meditation while receiving either placebo or a high-dose of naloxone, a drug that stops both synthetic and endogenous opioids from working. At the same time, they experienced a very painful but harmless heat stimulus to the back of the leg. The researchers measured and compared how much pain relief was experienced from meditation when the opioid system was blocked versus when it was intact.

The study found:

  • Blocking the opioid system with naloxone inhibited meditation-based pain relief in men, suggesting that men rely on endogenous opioids to reduce pain.
  • Naloxone increased meditation-based pain relief in women, suggesting that women rely on non-opioid mechanisms to reduce pain.
  • In both men and women, people with chronic pain experienced more pain relief from meditation than healthy participants.

“These results underscore the need for more sex-specific pain therapies, because many of the treatments we use don’t work nearly as well for women as they do for men,” said Zeidan.

The researchers conclude that by tailoring pain treatment to an individual’s sex, it may be possible to improve patient outcomes and reduce the reliance on and misuse of opioids.

“There are clear disparities in how pain is managed between men and women, but we haven’t seen a clear biological difference in the use of their endogenous systems before now,” said Zeidan. “This study provides the first clear evidence that sex-based differences in pain processing are real and need to be taken more seriously when developing and prescribing treatment for pain.”

Source: University of California – San Diego

Categories : Gender Obstetrics & GynaecologyTags :

Boy or Girl? This Genetic Mutation Increases Odds of Having a Daughter

On By ModernMedia
Source: Pixabay CC0

Each year, roughly the same numbers of boys and girls are born. But in individual families, some couples have four or more daughters and no sons, and some have all male children and no female children, points out University of Michigan evolutionary geneticist Jianzhi Zhang. This has led some scientists to question whether this skewed sex ratio is a result of the genes of the parents.

Now, Zhang and U-M doctoral student Siliang Song have detected a human genetic variant that influences the sex ratio of children. Additionally, they found that many hidden genetic variants of sex ratio may exist in human populations. Their results are published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

“Scientists have been pondering and researching a genetic basis for sex ratio for decades, yet no unambiguous evidence for a genetic variation that alters the human sex ratio from an approximately 50:50 ratio has been found,” said Zhang, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.

Zhang says this has led some scientists to think that the human sex ratio is not subject to mutation.

“But this scenario seems unlikely, because almost all human characteristics are subject to mutation and genetic variation,” he said. “Instead, we think genetic variation of sex ratio is too difficult to detect because sex ratio is not measured precisely.”

That is, each person typically has a very small number of children, which can lead to large errors in the estimation of the true sex ratio of a person’s children. For example, if a person only has one child, the estimated sex ratio would be either zero (if it’s a girl) or 1 (if it’s a boy) even if the true sex ratio is 0.5.

To detect genetic influence on sex ratio, the researchers realised they needed a much larger sample than in all previous studies. They turned to the UK Biobank, a biomedical database that contains the genetic and phenotypic information of about 500 000 British participants.

Analysing this data, the researchers identified a single nucleotide change named rs144724107 that is associated with a 10% increase in the probability of giving birth to a girl as opposed to a boy. But this nucleotide change is rare among the UK Biobank participants: About 0.5% of the participants carry this change. The nucleotide change is located near a gene named ADAMTS14, which is a member of the ADAMTS gene family known to be involved in spermatogenesis and fertilisation. The researchers also note that their discovery has not yet been confirmed in other samples.

The researchers also identified two genes, called RLF and KIF20B, that may also influence the sex ratio.

The study’s findings align with a theory in evolutionary biology called Fisher’s principle, which states that natural selection favours the genetic variant that increases the births of the rare sex. That is, if fewer males than females are born in a population, natural selection favours genetic variants that increase the number of males born, and vice versa. As a result, this selection yields a more or less even sex ratio in the population

“For Fisher’s principle to work, there must be mutations that influence the sex ratio,” Zhang said. “The fact that no genetic variation on human sex ratio had been identified has led some scientists to question the applicability of Fisher’s principle in humans.

“Our study shows that in fact, human data are consistent with Fisher’s principle and the reason no genetic variants of sex ratio had been discovered was the imprecision of the measure of a person’s offspring sex ratio.”

Next, the researchers hope to verify their findings in other samples – not an easy task, Zhang says, because of the large sample size requirement and the rareness of the identified genetic variant.

Source: University of Michigan

Categories : Cancer GenderTags :

Yes, Men can Get Breast Cancer

On By ModernMedia

Dr Salomine Theron, a radiologist at the SCP Radiology and Dr Lizanne Langenhoven, who specialises in the treatment of breast cancer, talk about breast cancer in men, how prevalent it is as well as the radiology behind the diagnosis, treatment and surveillance for recurrence.

‘It may come as a surprise that men can develop breast cancer,’ says Dr Langenhoven. ‘In fact, about 1% of all breast cancer cases are diagnosed in men. Unfortunately, men often present with more advanced disease, because they are not aware that they can develop breast cancer in the first place.’

Dr Theron says radiology plays a pivotal role in the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer in both men and women. However, there is a difference in terms of radiology’s initial role in screening for breast cancer. ‘In women over 40, we recommend an annual mammography,’ she says. ‘In other words, looking for cancers which are asymptomatic. So even if there are no changes to your breast visibly or a lump, we still screen for anything that may develop into breast cancer or has already.

‘In men, that is not standard practice’ Here radiology is diagnostic and the referral is as a result of a lump in the breast, under the arm, there’s puckering or nipple pain. The mammogram differs too. It is a single mammogram image of each breast so that a comparison can be made.  In men, it will also include breast ultrasound and evaluation of the lymph nodes under the armpit.

Dr Theron says, ‘the imaging of a lump may also be incidental. For example, when we do any form of CT imaging on the chest in a male, even when creating images of the lungs, we always look at the soft tissue in the breast area. If we see an asymmetric nodule with an irregular shape (almost like a star) we alert the patient’s healthcare provider, even though that wasn’t the reason for the CT scan’.

Is a breast lump always in men always cancer?

‘No,’ says Dr Langenhoven, ‘About 50% of males develop small lumps in each of their breasts during puberty, usually behind the nipples which can be tender. This is called gynaecomastia – colloquially a ‘stony’ and it’s perfectly normal. It usually goes away as they finish puberty.

‘Breast cancer, on the other hand, usually presents as a firm nodule in one breast that is not tender. There are some men who present with inflammatory breast cancer, where the breast is red, swollen and tender. This is however, a rare but aggressive type of invasive breast cancer in which cancer cells block lymph vessels in the skin.’

She says, ‘the first message is one of awareness.  Men can develop breast cancer.  And that they should see their GP if they become aware of a lump in their breasts which feels firm and asymmetrical or if the breast becomes red, swollen and tender.’

The second message is one of precaution

Women and men can inherit the harmful BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation that belong to a class of genes, known as tumour suppressors and have an increased risk of breast cancer.

Dr Langenhoven says, ‘I have a patient in my practice who presented with a hard lump on his left breast. Because he was aware of his family’s history of breast cancer, he went to his GP for an examination. A mammogram and biopsy confirmed the diagnosis of breast cancer.

She says men with these genes should always be assessed by a genetic counsellor. In addition, should you have a family member diagnosed with male breast cancer, prostate cancer below the age of fifty or ovarian cancer (women), you should seek the opinion of a genetic counsellor to discuss the possible genetic risk and the option of genetic testing. Prevention is better than cure.’

The role of radiology in diagnosis

‘A suspicious lump or mass can only be definitively diagnosed by a biopsy,’ says Dr Theron. She explains that there are three biopsy options:

  • Ultrasound guided core biopsies, where a sample of tissue or blood is taken for testing by a pathologist and a marker is left in the lesion or lump where the sample was taken
  • A fine needle aspiration (FNA) is a procedure to obtain a sample of cells from your body for testing by a cytologist for cancer cells usually of a lymph node or occasionally of a breast mass
  • A vacuum-assisted biopsy can produce slightly larger samples of tissues which is sent to the pathology lab
  • If there is no lump visible on ultrasound, only suspicious calcification on the mammogram, stereotactic guided vacuum biopsy will be done. Put simply, a mammogram will help us find the abnormality to biopsy
  • If the lump is very small or has a cystic component, an ultrasound guided vacuum assisted biopsy will be performed

Radiology at every stage of cancer care

‘Radiology is integral to breast cancer management beyond diagnosis, providing critical information that guides clinical decisions at every stage of care,’ says Dr Theron. ‘This includes staging of the disease, it allows for precise treatment planning, guiding surgical procedures, effective monitoring of treatment responses, early detection of recurrence, all of which are essential for improving patient outcomes.’

Male breast cancer treatment

Men with breast cancer are treated exactly as their female counterparts. Based on the type of breast cancer and the extent (stage), treatment options include chemotherapy, hormone withdrawal therapy, targeted therapies, immunotherapy, surgery and radiotherapy.

‘Even though only one in a hundred diagnosed cases of breast cancer is men,’ says Dr Theron, ‘we still urge men and of course women to check themselves regularly and to see a doctor if they feel or see any changes in their breasts.’

Early detection can save your life.

Categories : Environmental Effects GenderTags :

Older Women more Vulnerable to Heat than Men, Researchers Find

On By ModernMedia
Photo by Loren Joseph on Unsplash

As global climate change causes extreme heat waves to become more common around the world, epidemiological studies have shown that heat kills more women than men. Now, a new study by researchers at Penn State has found that older women are physiologically more vulnerable to high heat and humidity than older men, and that women between the ages of 40 and 64 are as vulnerable as men 65 years of age or older. This is the first study to determine this disparity exists due to physiological differences rather than from a preponderance of women at old age due to greater longevity.

Led by Olivia Leach, doctoral candidate in kinesiology at Penn State, and her adviser, W. Larry Kenney, professor of physiology and kinesiology at Penn State, the researchers demonstrated that middle-aged and older women were affected by heat at lower temperature/humidity combinations than middle-aged and older men. The results, published in the American Journal of Physiology-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, were somewhat unexpected, according to Leach, because there are no differences in heat vulnerability based on biological sex in adults younger than 30.

While the researchers did not directly compare middle-aged men to middle-aged women, the physiological responses of middle-aged women were similar to the responses of older men in the study, which demonstrated that middle-aged women are more vulnerable to heat than men of the same age.

“In addition to demonstrating that middle-aged and older women are at greater risk from extreme heat, we also identified what levels of heat and humidity are safe for women as they age,” Leach said. “This information is presented as a temperature/humidity curve based on a person’s age, and it can be useful for setting policies designed to keep people safe during a heat wave.”

The researchers tested the heat thresholds of 72 participants between 40 and 92 years of age in a specialized environmental chamber in Kenney’s laboratory. Before the experiment, participants swallowed a tiny device encased in a capsule that measured their core temperature throughout the experiment.

During the study, participants entered the specialised environmental chamber where they performed light physical activity to simulate the effort of minimal day-to-day tasks – the types of things people would need to do even during a heat wave. The researchers then gradually increased the temperature and/or humidity in the chamber until the participant’s body could no longer adequately cool itself, and their core temperature began to rise.

The study is part of the PSU HEAT, or Human Environmental Age Thresholds, project, led by Kenney. For five years, researchers in the PSU HEAT project have examined the levels of combined heat and humidity that humans can tolerate before their core temperatures begin to rise. When core temperatures rise, people become vulnerable to heat-related illnesses including heat exhaustion, heat stroke and even death.

“We’re not saying that people who experience a certain temperature will necessarily become sick or die,” Kenney said. “We are identifying the limits of livability – the thresholds where people can no longer continue their daily life unimpeded. Once people reach these temperatures, they need to take actions like seeking air conditioning to cool their bodies.”

Previous research by Kenney and others demonstrated that people become increasingly vulnerable to heat as they age, because their ability to efficiently sweat and pump blood to the skin – two primary cooling mechanisms – decreases. Sweat evaporation carries heat away from the body, while extra blood pumped to the skin dissipates heat to the environment and supports sweating.

To date, the PSU HEAT project has conducted more than 600 experiments on nearly 200 participants between ages 18 and 92, but the results of this experiment still yielded surprises, according to Leach.

“Among young adults, there is no difference in heat vulnerability between men and women,” Leach said. “Young people tend to be healthier, so any measurable health metric – from blood pressure to cholesterol – is more homogeneous among young people than it is among older people.”

As with other health measures, older adults have a wide range in their vulnerability to heat, Leach explained.

“We have examined many factors that might explain who faces the most risk in a heat wave,” Leach said. “We found that age and biological sex are the two most important factors that can predict whether a healthy adult would be at risk from high heat and humidity.”

While cardiovascular health and certain medications can affect a person’s sensitivity to heat, biological sex and age appear to be the two primary drivers of heat vulnerability among healthy people, the researchers said.

“Other factors – for example someone’s cardiovascular fitness or their body mass – have little impact on how vulnerable a person is to heat at rest or during light activity,” Leach continued. “Older women really are at greater risk from heat than other people. As governments and other social leaders prepare for extreme heat to become more common, the vulnerability of older women needs to factor into their planning.”

Source: Penn State

Categories : Gender Immune SystemTags :

New Research Explains Differences in Men’s and Women’s Immune Systems

On By ModernMedia
Photo by Daniil Onischenko on Unsplash

By analysing the immune system of female-to-male transgender individuals, Swedish researchers demonstrate the role of sex hormones in regulating the immune system. This newfound knowledge, published in Nature, explains differences between men and women, particularly in terms of immune signalling, and can be used to develop new immunological medications according to researchers.

Sex differences in the immune system are regulated both by genetics and by sex hormones. However, immunological comparisons between men and women can never fully distinguish the significance of genetic versus hormonal variations.

Now, three Swedish research groups led by Karolinska Institutet and Uppsala University has conducted a unique study analysing the regulation and adaptation of the immune system over time in 23 trans men who have undergone gender-affirming testosterone treatment, starting at the age of 18–37 years.

“We have followed individuals who were assigned female sex at birth and later received testosterone treatment in adulthood. Their genetic profile remains unchanged, while their hormone profile shifts entirely from typically female to male hormone levels,” says Petter Brodin, paediatrician and professor of paediatric immunology at the Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, Karolinska Institutet, who led the study together with Nils Landegren, assistant professor at Uppsala University, and Olle Kämpe, Professor at the Department of Medicine, Solna, Karolinska Institutet. “This unique change allows us, for the first time, to identify which parts of a person’s immune system are directly regulated by sex hormones rather than genetic sex differences.” 

The researchers can now demonstrate that increased testosterone levels and the accompanying reduction in oestrogen particularly affect the balance between two crucial immune signalling systems: antiviral interferon type 1 (IFN-1) and proinflammatory signals such as tumour necrosis factor alpha (TNFα).  

Specifically, they found that testosterone modulates a cross-regulated axis between type-I interferon and tumour necrosis factor. This is mediated by functional attenuation of type-I interferon responses in both plasmacytoid dendritic cells and monocytes. Conversely, testosterone potentiates monocyte responses leading to increased tumour necrosis factor, interleukin-6 and interleukin-15 production and downstream activation of nuclear factor kappa B-regulated genes and potentiation of interferon-γ responses, primarily in natural killer cells. 

The immune system changes throughout life

They also have a hypothesis about why the immune system needs to be dynamically regulated by hormones throughout life. 

“All individuals must be able to adjust their immune systems over the course of their lives to be optimally regulated for the conditions and challenges we face. During puberty and sexual maturation, new demands arise, and the immune system must be regulated differently to enable pregnancy in women and muscle growth in men,” says Petter Brodin. 

By regulating these key functions via sex hormones, this can be achieved, and in women, it is dynamically controlled even during a menstrual cycle,” he adds. 

The results of the study open an entirely new field of research, according to Nils Landegren. 

“The newfound knowledge will help us better influence people’s immune systems even without using sex hormones. For example, new drugs can be developed to impact these regulatory mechanisms and thus rebalance the immune response, especially for women with the autoimmune rheumatic disease SLE,” he explains. 

However, the results also have a more direct implications for transgender individuals. 

“This research is also of crucial for transgender individuals undergoing gender-affirming hormone therapy, and I believe that this group deserves significantly more scientific attention and follow-up to ensure their long-term health,” says Petter Brodin. 

Source: Karolinska Institutet

Categories : Gastrointestinal GenderTags :

Higher Rates of Cirrhosis in Transgender Individuals

On By ModernMedia
Source: CC0

Cirrhosis is chronic, progressive end-stage liver disease that occurs when scar tissue prevents the liver from functioning normally. Studies have shown that two of the leading causes of cirrhosis – alcohol use disorder and viral hepatitis – occur more frequently in transgender individuals, but there has been little research examining if these risk factors translate into greater incidences of cirrhosis among transgender patients.  

A new study from Keck Medicine of USC published in The American Journal of Gastroenterology finds that transgender adults have double the prevalence of cirrhosis compared to cisgender adults (people whose gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth), suggesting a need for more supportive, preventive care. 

“Our study reveals that cirrhosis disproportionately affects transgender individuals and highlights a pressing health issue that needs addressing,” said Brian P. Lee, MD, MAS, a hepatologist and liver transplant specialist with Keck Medicine and principal investigator of the study. 

Lee and his colleagues launched the study to provide scientifically backed liver health guidance for physicians so they could offer transgender patients a higher level of care. 

Besides discovering that transgender cirrhosis rates are double that of the cisgender population, the study authors also learned that the majority of transgender adults with cirrhosis (60%) have a diagnosis of anxiety and/or depression, compared to 40% of the cisgender patients with cirrhosis.  

They also found that alcohol was the leading cause of cirrhosis in the transgender group, accounting for some 60% of cases while the percentage of cisgender adults with alcohol-associated cirrhosis was approximately 50%. 

In other findings, transgender patients with cirrhosis also tended to be younger (a larger portion were 44 or younger), had higher rates of viral hepatitis and were five times more likely to have HIV/AIDS than their cisgender counterparts.  

Possible reasons behind the disparity  

Lee hypothesises that the increased rates of depression and anxiety may be driving higher rates of alcohol use among transgender patients, which in turn, may result in greater cases of cirrhosis.  

The increased rate of HIV/AIDS among transgender patients may also be a factor in that both conditions are known to be associated with liver disease progression, according to Lee.  

Lack of access to quality health care could also play a role, hypothesises Jeffrey Kahn, MD, a hepatologist and liver transplant physician with Keck Medicine and co-author of the study.  

Similar outcomes

Researchers also studied the five-year outcomes among all transgender and cisgender patients with cirrhosis. Interestingly, despite the differences in the two groups, the number of possible negative outcomes of cirrhosis – liver failure, liver transplant and liver cancer, as well as death, by any cause – was the same.  

“This finding suggests that the transgender community is underserved in the initial stages of liver disease, but individuals are able to secure the care they need once cirrhosis is diagnosed,” said Kahn. “Early prevention is key because if liver disease is caught in time, there is less of a chance it will progress to cirrhosis.”  

To reach their conclusions, study authors culled data from a large national database, Optum, that contained medical claims for more than 60 million patients between 2007–2022. They first identified all transgender and cisgender adults (transgender patients accounted for 0.07%), and then compared the incidences of cirrhosis among each group as well as causes of the disease. Additionally, researchers tracked depression and anxiety in patients. 

Lee and Kahn hope the study will spur more research and motivate health care practitioners to provide transgender patients with extra support, including liver screenings and access to mental health resources. “This population requires specific attention from clinicians and researchers alike,” said Lee. 

Source: University of Southern California – Health Sciences

Categories : GenderTags :

Women’s Mental Agility is Better During Their Periods

On By ModernMedia
Photo by Ashley Williams

New research involving female football players has shown that they react more quickly and accurately during their periods, despite them feeling that they perform worse. The study, published in Neuropsychologia, is the first to assess sport-related cognition during the menstrual cycle and is part of a larger research project supported by the FIFA Research Scholarship.

The findings, from University College London, act as a proof-of-principle that specific types of cognition fluctuate throughout the menstrual cycle, which could have implications for injury and other aspects of women’s health.

Previous sports medicine research has shown that women seem to be at greater risk of sport-related injury during the luteal phase, which is the time between ovulation and menstruation. This is possibly related to the significant hormonal changes that occur throughout the menstrual cycle. But precisely how these changes are linked to an increased likelihood of injury are unknown at present.

In this study, researchers at UCL and ISEH collected reaction time and error data from 241 participants who completed a battery of cognitive tests 14 days apart. Participants also completed a mood scale and a symptom questionnaire twice. Period-tracking apps were used to estimate which phase of their cycle the participants were in when they took the tests.

The tests were designed to mimic mental processes that are typical in team sports. In one test, participants were shown smiling or winking faces and asked to press the space bar only when they saw a smiley face, to test inhibition, attention, reaction time and accuracy. In another, they were asked to identify mirror images in a 3D rotation task, which assesses spatial cognition. A task that asked them to click when two moving balls collide on screen measured spatial timing.

Though participants reported feeling worse during menstruation and perceived that this negatively impacted their performance, their reaction times were faster and they made fewer errors. For example, their timing was on average 10 milliseconds (12%) more accurate in the moving balls task, and they pressed the space bar at the wrong time 25% less in the inhibition task.

Participants’ reaction times were slower during the luteal phase, which begins after ovulation and lasts between 12–14 days up to the beginning of menstruation. They were on average 10–20 milliseconds slower compared to being in any other phase, but their error rate was unchanged.

Dr Flaminia Ronca, first author of the study from UCL Division of Surgery and Interventional Science and ISEH, said: “Research suggests that female athletes are more likely to sustain certain types of sports injuries during the luteal phase and the assumption has been that this is due to biomechanical changes as a result of hormonal variation. But I wasn’t convinced that physical changes alone could explain this association.

“Given that progesterone has an inhibitory effect on the cerebral cortex and oestrogen stimulates it, making us react slower or faster, we wondered if injuries could be a result of a change in athletes’ timing of movements throughout the cycle.

“What is surprising is that the participant’s performance was better when they were on their period, which challenges what women, and perhaps society more generally, assume about their abilities at this particular time of the month.

“I hope that this will provide the basis for positive conversations between coaches and athletes about perceptions and performance: how we feel doesn’t always reflect how we perform.”

To put the findings in context, the authors say the fluctuation in timing could be the difference between an injury or not. Previous research has shown that a variation of just 10 milliseconds can mean the difference between a concussion and a lesser injury, for example. In the colliding balls task, participants’ timing was on average 12 milliseconds slower during the luteal phase compared to every other phase, a difference of 16%.

Dr Megan Lowery, an author of the study from UCL Surgery & Interventional Science and ISEH, said: “There’s lots of anecdotal evidence from women that they might feel clumsy just before ovulation, for example, which is supported by our findings here. My hope is that if women understand how their brains and bodies change during the month, it will help them to adapt.

“Though there’s a lot more research needed in this area, these findings are an important first step towards understanding how women’s cognition affects their athletic performance at different points during their cycle, which will hopefully facilitate positive conversations between coaches and athletes around performance and wellbeing.”

Professor Paul Burgess, senior author of the study from UCL’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, said: “This study emerged from listening carefully to female soccer players and their coaches. We created bespoke cognitive tests to try to mimic the demands made upon the brain at the points in the game where they were telling us that injuries and problems of timing occur at certain times of the menstrual cycle.

“As suggested by what the soccer players had told us, the data suggested that women who menstruate – whether they are athletes or not – do tend to vary in their performance at certain stages of the cycle. As a neuroscientist, I am amazed that we don’t already know more about this, and hope that our study will help motivate increasing interest in this vital aspect of sports medicine.”

Source: University College London

Categories : GenderTags :

Sex Differences Don’t Disappear as a Country’s Equality Develops – Sometimes They Become Stronger

On By ModernMedia
Master1305/Shutterstock

Agneta Herlitz, Karolinska Institutet

The more gender equal a society is, the more similar men and women will be, adopting more similar interests, personality traits and behavioural patterns. Or so many people seem to believe.

Statements like this might sound like truisms, but science shows reality may be more complicated.

Several studies have found that some psychological sex differences, such as those in personality, are larger in more gender-equal countries. The same goes for countries that are more educated, prosperous and otherwise have better living conditions. This has become known as the gender-equality paradox.

Until recently, it was unclear how widespread this pattern might be. My team, which included research assistant Kare Hedebrant, tried to address that in a recently published study, where we investigated which psychological sex differences are associated with living conditions and, if so, how.

The study covered a range of themes, from personality and cognitive functions to sexting and circadian rhythm. Our study focused on mostly western countries but used some data from other countries such as India and Kenya.

We reviewed 54 articles that analyse the relationship between magnitudes of psychological sex differences and country-level indicators of living conditions. We also used data from 27 meta-analyses (reviews of previous research) of psychological sex differences and conducted new analyses to determine associations between sex differences and national economy, education, health, gender equality and more.

Sex differences

Each study used data from at least five countries, usually spanning several decades.

We grouped the many psychological dimensions covered by these studies into six categories: personal characteristics, cognition, interpersonal relations, emotion, academic preferences (such as a pull towards science, technology, engineering and maths) and morals and values.

Our findings paint a complex picture, showing that variation in psychological sex difference did not follow a uniform pattern. In countries with better living conditions, males and females are more alike in some regards and more different in others.

For example, differences in personality characteristics were frequently found to be larger in countries with better living conditions. This includes traits such as extroversion, agreeableness and altruism, which research seems to show are more strongly associated with women. The same was true for sex differences in some dimensions of emotion, specifically negative emotions in which females tend to score higher, such as shame.

Woman's hands holding a white paper sheet with male and female symbol over a crowded city street background
The gender paradox has confused researchers. StunningArt/Shutterstock

There were also exceptions to the gender-equality paradox. Sex differences in sexual behaviour, like engaging in casual sex, were consistently found to be smaller in countries with better living conditions. This is probably because women in these countries, where there are more permissive norms, have better access to contraceptives.

A complicated phenomenon

For cognitive functions, sex differences were sometimes larger, sometimes smaller in countries with better living conditions. Interestingly, the sex differences were larger in cognitive domains where women have strengths.

For instance, episodic memory (memory for experienced events) and verbal ability, where females typically do better than males, saw larger sex differences as living conditions improved. Females got better at episodic memory when they had better living conditions. By contrast, sex differences in semantic memory (memory for facts) and mathematical ability, where males tend to do better, decreased when living conditions improved.

This suggests that, when it comes to cognitive abilities, females benefit more than males from improvements in living conditions. The performance gap increases in domains where females have an advantage and closes in domains where males are ahead.

Not all psychological sex differences were associated with living conditions in the same way. So, can we say that there is a gender-equality paradox? Yes, to some extent, since more sex differences grew, rather than decreased, in countries with better living conditions.

In most cases, however, psychological sex difference magnitudes were not significantly associated with living conditions. This suggests that, in general, psychological sex differences are not greatly affected by living conditions but seem instead quite stable. For instance, research often finds females get higher grades at school across different subjects. It’s also common for researcher to find males have greater interest in maths. But neither seems to be affected by living conditions.

Even in cases where the magnitude of sex differences did vary in relation to living conditions, the pattern of male and female advantages usually remained the same. So, for example, though the female advantage over males in episodic memory ability is greater in some countries than others, females outperform males in almost all countries.

In summary, we found little support for the idea that psychological sex differences will vanish as societies develop. Policymakers probably cannot rely on that if they hope to achieve equal distributions of men and women in different professions. Instead, it appears that the dominant feature of psychological sex differences is their robustness in the face of social change.

Agneta Herlitz, Professor of Psychology, Karolinska Institutet

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.