Observable variations in human sex ratio at birth
| Autor: | Qi Chen, Yanan Long, Andrey Rzhetsky, Henrik Larsson |
|---|---|
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2021 |
| Předmět: |
Male
0106 biological sciences Sexual Selection Population Dynamics Global Health 01 natural sciences Geographical locations 5. Gender equality Public health surveillance Natural Selection Medicine and Health Sciences Cluster Analysis Public and Occupational Health Biology (General) 0303 health sciences education.field_of_study Ecology Water pollutants Pollution Regression 3. Good health Europe Computational Theory and Mathematics Modeling and Simulation Sexual selection Regression Analysis Female Public Health Sex ratio Research Article Evolutionary Processes QH301-705.5 Population Biology 010603 evolutionary biology Human sex ratio 03 medical and health sciences Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience Swedish population Population Metrics Electronic health record Air Pollution Genetics Humans Sex Ratio European Union education Molecular Biology Ecology Evolution Behavior and Systematics 030304 developmental biology Sweden Pollutant Evolutionary Biology Models Statistical Population Biology business.industry Ecology and Environmental Sciences Water Pollution Infant Newborn Biology and Life Sciences Neonates Computational Biology United States 13. Climate action Agriculture North America People and places business Ibm watson Developmental Biology Demography |
| Zdroj: | PLoS Computational Biology, Vol 17, Iss 12, p e1009586 (2021) PLoS Computational Biology |
| ISSN: | 1553-7358 |
| Popis: | The human sex ratio at birth (SRB), defined as the ratio between the number of newborn boys to the total number of newborns, is typically slightly greater than 1/2 (more boys than girls) and tends to vary across different geographical regions and time periods. In this large-scale study, we sought to validate previously-reported associations and test new hypotheses using statistical analysis of two very large datasets incorporating electronic medical records (EMRs). One of the datasets represents over half (∼ 150 million) of the US population for over 8 years (IBM Watson Health MarketScan insurance claims) while another covers the entire Swedish population (∼ 9 million) for over 30 years (the Swedish National Patient Register). After testing more than 100 hypotheses, we showed that neither dataset supported models in which the SRB changed seasonally or in response to variations in ambient temperature. However, increased levels of a diverse array of air and water pollutants, were associated with lower SRBs, including increased levels of industrial and agricultural activity, which served as proxies for water pollution. Moreover, some exogenous factors generally considered to be environmental toxins turned out to induce higher SRBs. Finally, we identified new factors with signals for either higher or lower SRBs. In all cases, the effect sizes were modest but highly statistically significant owing to the large sizes of the two datasets. We suggest that while it was unlikely that the associations have arisen from sex-specific selection mechanisms, they are still useful for the purpose of public health surveillance if they can be corroborated by empirical evidences. Author summary The human sex ratio at birth (SRB), usually slightly greater than 1/2, have been reported to vary in response to a wide array of exogenous factors. In the literature, many such factors have been posited to be associated with higher or lower SRBs, but the studies conducted so far have focused on no more than a few factors at a time and used far smaller datasets, thus prone to generating spurious correlations. We performed a series of statistical tests on 2 large, country-wide health datasets representing the United States and Sweden to investigate associations between putative exogenous factors and the SRB, and were able to validate a set of previously-reported associations while also discovering new signals. We propose to interpret these results simply as public health indicators awaiting further empirical confirmation rather than as implicated in (adaptive) sexual selection mechanisms. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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