Health status by gender, hair color, and eye color: Red-haired women are the most divergent

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00023752%3A_____%2F17%3A43919308" target="_blank" >RIV/00023752:_____/17:43919308 - isvavai.cz</a>

Alternative codes found

RIV/00216208:11310/17:10371471

Result on the web

<a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0190238" target="_blank" >http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0190238</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190238" target="_blank" >10.1371/journal.pone.0190238</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Health status by gender, hair color, and eye color: Red-haired women are the most divergent

Original language description

Red hair is associated in women with pain sensitivity. This medical condition, and perhaps others, seems facilitated by the combination of being red-haired and female. We tested this hypothesis by questioning a large sample of Czech and Slovak respondents about the natural redness and darkness of their hair, their natural eye color, their physical and mental health (24 categories), and other personal attributes (height, weight, number of children, lifelong number of sexual partners, frequency of smoking). Red-haired women did worse than other women in ten health categories and better in only three, being particularly prone to colorectal, cervical, uterine, and ovarian cancer. Red-haired men showed a balanced pattern, doing better than other men in three health categories and worse in three. Number of children was the only category where both male and female redheads did better than other respondents. We also confirmed earlier findings that red hair is naturally more frequent in women than in men. Of the ` new&apos; hair and eye colors, red hair diverges the most from the ancestral state of black hair and brown eyes, being the most sexually dimorphic variant not only in population frequency but also in health status. This divergent health status may have one or more causes: direct effects of red hair pigments (pheomelanins) or their by-products; effects of other genes that show linkage with genes involved in pheomelanin production; excessive prenatal exposure to estrogen (which facilitates expression of red hair during fetal development and which, at high levels, may cause health problems later in life); evolutionary recentness of red hair and corresponding lack of time to correct negative side effects; or genetic incompatibilities associated with the allele Val92Met, which seems to be of Neanderthal origin and is one of the alleles that can cause red hair.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

30101 - Human genetics

Project

—

Continuities

V - Vyzkumna aktivita podporovana z jinych verejnych zdroju

Publication year

2017

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

PLoS One

ISSN

1932-6203

e-ISSN

—

Volume of the periodical

12

Issue of the periodical within the volume

12

Country of publishing house

US - UNITED STATES

Number of pages

16

Pages from-to

"e0190238"

UT code for WoS article

000419033400043

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85039795523