Sex hormones determine the future predisposition of the body to diseases
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
All iLive content is medically reviewed or fact checked to ensure as much factual accuracy as possible.
We have strict sourcing guidelines and only link to reputable media sites, academic research institutions and, whenever possible, medically peer reviewed studies. Note that the numbers in parentheses ([1], [2], etc.) are clickable links to these studies.
If you feel that any of our content is inaccurate, out-of-date, or otherwise questionable, please select it and press Ctrl + Enter.
The cells of the embryo are very sensitive to the level of sex hormones; the preponderance of estrogens or testosterone in the early stages of development can manifest itself not only in innocuous anatomical features, but also in the future predisposition of the organism to various diseases.
The unnamed finger in men is usually longer than the ring finger of women; in some cultures, its length is directly linked to male fertility. It turned out that such a seemingly insignificant line is a very fundamental explanation. The size of the ring finger depends on the hormonal balance during embryonic development, and this is not the only thing that matters: the same mechanism most likely determines the development of a number of signs in an adult organism.
The existence of some connection between sex hormones and the length of fingers on the arm was assumed for a long time, but researchers from the University of Florida (USA) for the first time received this rigorous experimental confirmation. Experiments on mice have shown that the rudiments of fingers in mouse embryos are literally packed into hormonal receptors that react to testosterone and estrogens. By controlling the level of both hormones, it was possible to affect the length of the ring finger: increasing testosterone levels stimulated the division of precursor cells of bone tissue; blocking of testosterone receptors, on the contrary, suppressed. Bone rudiments of different fingers had different sensitivity to sex hormones and therefore reacted differently to their content. In total, the sensitivity to testosterone and estrogen in the fetus is controlled by 19 genes.
The results of their experiments, scientists are going to publish in the journal PNAS.
Of course, the meaning of the work done is not to establish the influence of sex hormones on the features of the anatomical constitution. The relative size of the fingers was not connected with anything: with aggressiveness of character, with musical abilities, and with sexual orientation; there have been attempts to find a correlation between the length of the fingers and various health problems, from autism and clinical depression to breast cancer and cardiovascular insufficiency.
Since it has now become apparent that the hormonal level in embryonic development can have such "long-lasting" consequences, influence the entire subsequent life of the organism, this opens up new opportunities for prenatal medicine. The interconnection of many diseases with anatomical features can be explained by hormonal imbalance in the early stages of development, and timely intervention is able to literally change the fate of an unborn person.
[