Skin fairness, not hair redness, can be responsible for impaired physical and mental health of redheads

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216208%3A11310%2F19%3A10409894" target="_blank" >RIV/00216208:11310/19:10409894 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://verso.is.cuni.cz/pub/verso.fpl?fname=obd_publikace_handle&handle=4fxGIgfamC" target="_blank" >https://verso.is.cuni.cz/pub/verso.fpl?fname=obd_publikace_handle&handle=4fxGIgfamC</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-54662-5" target="_blank" >10.1038/s41598-019-54662-5</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Skin fairness, not hair redness, can be responsible for impaired physical and mental health of redheads

Original language description

Our preregistered study on a population of 4,117 subjects who took part in an anonymous electronic survey showed that the intensity of hair redness negatively correlated with physical health, mental health, fecundity and sexual desire, and positively with the number of kinds of drugs prescribed by a doctor currently taken, and with reported symptoms of impaired mental health. It also positively correlated with certain neuropsychiatric disorders, most strongly with learning disabilities disorder and phobic disorder in men and general anxiety disorder in women. However, most of these associations disappeared when the darkness of skin was included in the models, suggesting that skin fairness, not hair redness, is responsible for the associations. About 1-2% of people of European origin have red hair. Especially female redheads are known to sufer higher pain sensitivity and higher incidence of some disorders, including skin cancer, Parkinson&apos;s disease and endometriosis. Recently, an explorative study performed on 7,000 subjects showed that both male and female redheads score worse on many health-related variables and express a higher incidence of cancer. Here, we ran the preregistered study on a population of 4,117 subjects who took part in an anonymous electronic survey. We confirmed that the intensity of hair redness negatively correlated with physical health, mental health, fecundity and sexual desire, and positively with the number of kinds of drugs prescribed by a doctor currently taken, and with reported symptoms of impaired mental health. It also positively correlated with certain neuropsychiatric disorders, most strongly with learning disabilities disorder and phobic disorder in men and general anxiety disorder in women. However, most of these associations disappeared when the darkness of skin was included in the models, suggesting that skin fairness, not hair redness, is responsible for the associations. We discussed two possible explanations for the observed pattern, the frst based on vitamin D defciency due to the avoidance of sunbathing by subjects with sensitive skin, including some redheads, and second based on folic acid depletion in fair skinned subjects, again including some (a diferent subpopulation of) redheads. It must be emphasized, however, that both of these explanations are only hypothetical as no data on the concentration of vitamin D or folic acid are available for our subjects. Our results, as well as the conclusions of current reviews, suggest that the new empirical studies on the concentration of vitamin D and folic acids in relation to skin and hair pigmentation are urgently needed.

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

10602 - Biology (theoretical, mathematical, thermal, cryobiology, biological rhythm), Evolutionary biology

Project

Result was created during the realization of more than one project. More information in the Projects tab.

Continuities

P - Projekt vyzkumu a vyvoje financovany z verejnych zdroju (s odkazem do CEP)

Publication year

2019

Confidentiality

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

Name of the periodical

Scientific Reports

ISSN

2045-2322

e-ISSN

—

Volume of the periodical

9

Issue of the periodical within the volume

December

Country of publishing house

GB - UNITED KINGDOM

Number of pages

13

Pages from-to

18138

UT code for WoS article

000500702200001

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85075945220