Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Orzack, Steven Hecht
• Stubblefield, J. William
• Akmaev, Viatcheslav R.
• Colls, Pere
• Munné, Santiago
• Scholl, Thomas
• Steinsaltz, David
• Zuckerman, James E.

Titel

human sex ratio from conception to birth

Ist Teil von

• Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS, 2015-04, Vol.112 (16), p.E2102-E2111

Ort / Verlag

United States: National Academy of Sciences

Erscheinungsjahr

2015

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Significance The human sex ratio has long interested cell biologists, developmental biologists, demographers, epidemiologists, evolutionary biologists, gynecologists, and statisticians. Nonetheless, the trajectory of the human sex ratio from conception to birth has been poorly characterized. We present the most comprehensive analysis of this trajectory ever done. Our dataset is the largest ever assembled to estimate the sex ratio at conception and is the first, to our knowledge, to include data from 3- to- 6-d-old embryos, induced abortions, chorionic villus sampling, amniocentesis, and fetal deaths and live births. Our results indicate that the sex ratio at conception is unbiased, the proportion of males increases during the first trimester, and total female mortality during pregnancy exceeds total male mortality; these are fundamental insights into early human development. We describe the trajectory of the human sex ratio from conception to birth by analyzing data from ( i ) 3- to 6-d-old embryos, ( ii ) induced abortions, ( iii ) chorionic villus sampling, ( iv ) amniocentesis, and ( v ) fetal deaths and live births. Our dataset is the most comprehensive and largest ever assembled to estimate the sex ratio at conception and the sex ratio trajectory and is the first, to our knowledge, to include all of these types of data. Our estimate of the sex ratio at conception is 0.5 (proportion male), which contradicts the common claim that the sex ratio at conception is male-biased. The sex ratio among abnormal embryos is male-biased, and the sex ratio among normal embryos is female-biased. These biases are associated with the abnormal/normal state of the sex chromosomes and of chromosomes 15 and 17. The sex ratio may decrease in the first week or so after conception (due to excess male mortality); it then increases for at least 10–15 wk (due to excess female mortality), levels off after ∼20 wk, and declines slowly from 28 to 35 wk (due to excess male mortality). Total female mortality during pregnancy exceeds total male mortality. The unbiased sex ratio at conception, the increase in the sex ratio during the first trimester, and total mortality during pregnancy being greater for females are fundamental insights into early human development.