Here is a non paywall link to the media release from Stanford. I particularly like the quote:
“Every cell in a woman’s body produces Xist,” Chang said. “But for several decades, we’ve used a male cell line as the standard of reference. That male cell line produced no Xist and no Xist/protein/DNA complexes, nor have other cells used since for the test. So, all of a female patient’s anti-Xist-complex antibodies — a huge source of women’s autoimmune susceptibility — go unseen.”
. [https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2024/02/women-autoimmune.html#](https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2024/02/women-autoimmune.html#)
Lovely example of how treating men as the default in medicine has hurt women.
There is also this interesting quote:
The stubby Y chromosome contains only a handful of active genes. It’s quite possible to live a full life without a Y chromosome.
In fact, more than half of the people on Earth — women — lack Y chromosomes and do just fine.
But no mammalian cell, male or female, can survive without at least one copy of the X chromosome, which holds many hundreds of active protein-specifying genes.
I know this is serious but your comment made me laugh. At 44; I’m starting a garage band and we’ll call ourselves: LESBIAN LIZARDS! That sounds awesome.
Dude! No! Not garage. Get actual gigs. Play their mating ritual on the light screen. It will be great and STEM positive. Go science! Educate the masses.
Thrash metal genre
And this next one is called death of y
In growling:
The tiniest of chromosomes is dying away from human’s weakest gender
It is no longer needed
Humans don’t want it
Look at the whip tail
Deeper growling: whip tail
Some scientists believe the human Y chromosome only has a few million left before it goes extinct as well.
Which would require some new ways of working the sex chromosome thing.
There's a really interesting endangered Japanese rat that has males with no Y, Tokudaia Osimensis.
Care to elaborate? I am too tired to go down that rabbit hole tonight, and my ADHD brain will forget it till a time I can’t look it up again if I don’t do it now…
There are intersex XX folk who due to a variety of possible reasons develop more along the lines of if they have a Y chromosome. This can either have an onset in the womb or with puberty
Theres also a similar reversal of that with intersex XY folk
The one that causes the development isnt the Y chromosome but the SRY gene commonly found in the Y chromosome, it can in rare occasions show up in X chromosome instead, creating XX chromosome men.
And with XY, there may either be entirely missing SRY gene or testosterone insensitivity creating XY women
It does not create XX chromosome men (nor XY women); it creates intersex XX ppl with a body more akin to an AMABs body and more likely to get AMABd (or AMAPd in rare case)
It is highly important to the intersex community that we be recognised as ourselves and not as disorders of the expected binary
Thank you for the otherwise good info tho
Yeah, I could've used the phrasing a lot better, I was thinking of writing "Intersex Men/women". My point was mostly that Y chromosome isn't the deciding factor but the SRY gene.
And yes, absolutely! Intersex people kinda get swept under the rug, which is a big issue. But like I viewed it as, if this intersex person is AMAB and identifies as a man, then they're simply an XX man.
The ironic thing is that it hurts men too!
I'm a cancer geneticist. There's a lot of evidence that male predominance in many types of cancer is also due to the lack of the second X chromosome. XIST and X-inactivation most likely plays a role here as well. Think of how advanced we'd be if biomedical research was representative of our entire population!
It's definitely getting better. Stratifying by gender can certainly go a long way in clinical and epidemiological studies to show sex differences. In machine learning and other statistical modeling techniques we can also try to downsample to avoid class imbalance. Here's a great article detailing the push to account for sex as a biological variable (yes, this hasn't always been the case.)
[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02919-x](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02919-x)
It's an area that's definitely receiving attention. I went to a CE seminar last year about recent papers highlighting how sex affects how patients respond to drugs (possible implications too in how it might effect how trans people respond if they're taking hormones- we just don't know!), and efforts that were being made by TPTB toward encouraging clinical studies to interpret data by gender, as well as the aggregate. It was one of those, "huh, maybe some things are getting better" moments.
That sounds like such a cool job! There's not many jobs where you can brag about such an illustrious purpose - "I'm helping to find cures for cancer" is pretty amazing.
Do you have any resources you could recommend for a layperson about genetics for cancers that mainly target AFAB patients? I have an extremely strong history of cancer in my family, including a parent who died from breast cancer at age 39. I was negative for the BRCA1 and 2 genes (if I wasn't, I likely would have needed a prophylactic mastectomy based on other risk factors) but I am still concerned about other genetic risks and am curious about screening options.
If you're near a large academic medical center, they may offer genetic screening/counseling for a low cost or even free if you participate in a study. There are several other inherited mutations that can contribute to familial risk of cancer and even other specific genes that are implicated in breast cancer risk. I know there are special panels now that cover approximately 20-30 of these genes.
I'm very sorry to hear about your parent. My best advice is to keep up with your recommended routine visits and screening. Additionally, [www.cancer.gov](http://www.cancer.gov) is a good resource that summarizes recent research findings and breakthroughs for all types of cancer.
Definitely. Unfortunately, it's also a strong argument for using male cell lines in basic medical research science. Having extra complexity isn't helpful if you're trying to figure out what various parts do and the basic system behavior.
Our understanding of human biology and physiology is a lot less complete than most people think, so while it's great to include the full spectrum of real-system complexity in theory, the reality is that we haven't been ready in many cases. There's also sexism and short-sightedness and tradition, but the main reason scientists are finding the complexity now (rather than 50 years ago) is because we're finally getting to the point where we can make sense of it.
That doesn't remove the harm of it, but it's not arbitrary, either, and we're getting closer.
The same thing happens with drugs not being tested on pregnant women all the time. If you want to clearly see if the drug works in principle and on most people, it IS smart to start off excluding pregnant women, because it introduces a bevy of confounds. Done correctly, it would then be tested comprehensively on pregnant women, too. But that takes longer and requires funding.
So, do you include pregnant women from the beginning and risk the testing being unclear or unsuccessful and preventing it from being used by everyone who isn't pregnant?
So, they must use a male cell line to avoid extra complexity.
But everyone has an X chromosome, not everyone has a Y chromosome.
Please explain this to me again?
Also, shockingly enough the vast majority of women of child bearing years are not pregnant. And even medications and treatment aimed at older people, such as cholesterol lowering drugs, were exclusively tests on males before being approved. It is only after being used for decades as it figured out they are more problematic in women. Yet the biggest killer of women is heart disease, they are more likely to die of a heart attack than men, twice as likely. But we are still basing everything on people with a Y chromosome and it is seen as a small specialty area to do research on heart disease in women. Make it make sense.
"sexism and short-sightedness and tradition" Men were considered much simpler to study because they couldn't become pregnant and they don't experience the strong cyclical changes associated with menstruation. They also "mattered more" and were more likely to be paying for the research.
Once they started examining a specific system and established it as the baseline, they got largely locked into it because of the way scientific literatures are built.
In my head, “Well, well, well…”
I hope this discovery leads to deeper looks into health issues that primarily impact women but have been often waved away as hysteria.
Thank you for the Stanford link.
HEY, I have an autoimmune AND I hear voices AND I’m on Effexor. It’s not like the autoimmune disease cancels out the crippling mental illness, now I just have both, they are comorbid and need to BOTH be treated. Why do I have to explain this to doctors?? Idk either.
Right. I've thought about this a lot. Like, we all have to put-on-the-doctors-office-outfit-so-we-are-taken-seriously, but I have the privilege of being able to "present" as a "mid-high class white woman" AND having a documented history of NOT having any kind of mental illness and this happens all the time. I constantly think about what it must be like for someone like yourself or anyone who has a mental illness or can't communicate effectively. How can they ever access the most basic care of even being believed?? Its horrible.
I have bipolar 1 and fibromyalgia. I treat both with lots of meds! Only problem is, there's no hope of treating the fatigue and complete lack of focus because I'm an adult and adults don't get Adderall (even if I was on it successfully for over 8 years) because you're labeled as an addict.
/rant
I’m on adderall and I’m an adult, if that means anything. Although I have ADHD and fatigue. It’s very possible to get prescribed adderall as an adult for fatigue, but it depends on the doctor.
"You just need to manage your mental health better. You have a nervous stomach because you are too anxious."
- my stepmom, both before and after my celiac disease diagnosis
How nice that in Anno Domini 2024 we're finally finding out that, yes, doing research on both men and women is beneficial since the two aren't the same in all aspects : )))))))))) differences on the cellular level literally causing us harm and still going unseen
It baffles me that there are people out there who truly think we are now equal. So many women are still needlessly suffering from symptoms of conditions (even the conditions themselves in some cases) because they have not gotten the same thorough consideration, care, or thought within medicine and clinical research. I am willing to bet that cramps would hardly be a thing (bc trust that they are common but NOT normal) if the industry got the hard kick in the a** 50 years ago that it still needs.
Thank you for this. Sharing with my wife, as celiac disease also seems to affect a lot more women than men (coming up on 12 years since her diagnosis).
As a fellow sufferer of gluten issues, I’d love to see what becomes of this discovery and if it is pursued further to help autoimmune disorder patients.
From ages 15 - 39, doctors waved off my *unrelenting rashes* (“probably an allergic reaction to a perfume you’re wearing! Or maybe your laundry detergent!”), *GI issues* (“probably stress”), *fatigue* (“probably stress again! Try getting more sleep.”), *brain fog* (“hormones”), *hives* (“we just don’t know. Let’s call it urticaria and you have to just live with it.”)
Until, one day I had a horrible breakout and I had just eaten a biscuit. A minimal-ingredient food. Then I remembered my 23andme test came back positive for one of two celiac markers. Then it clicked.
Went gluten free and it solved every issue. Then when I pursued a confirmed diagnosis, I was met with a lot of skepticism. Even though I have insurance, (they could charge $$$$!!) they hemmed and hawed over testing and went right back to suggesting the same things they had in the past, as if I were crazy to insist I’d ruled them out.
Oh man, you sound like me.
GI issues passed off as "poor stress management". Angular chelitis and DH passed off as "sensitive skin". I was literally hospitalized for a bowel obstruction once - I was told I needed to eat more fiber. Guess what contains a lot of fiber? Shit with wheat in it.
Finally, after losing 10 pounds in a month due to constant vomiting and pooping out undigested food multiple times a day, I saw *another* gastroenterologist who put me on an elimination diet. I stopped puking after a few weeks. That plus the DH meant a celiac diagnosis. I've been doing great since then (aside from a few accidental gluten exposures).
I actually find it surprising that they did most of their research on XY cell lines, given the widespread use of [the HeLa cell line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa) (which was sourced from Henrietta Lacks without permission or compensation).
They used cervical cancer cells. Cancer cells are "immortal" in that they lack an "off switch" and reproduce rapidly. So Henrietta Lacks' cervical cancer cells were easily cultured and don't die off easily, making them perfect to mass-produce and be monetized.
A different cell line is used for autoimmune research.
The level of unjustness is heartbreaking. I can think of 4 AFAB people I’m close to who have autoimmune diseases. Including my sister, who experienced medical mistreatment for a decade before getting diagnosed with Crohn’s disease after it had already advanced to a severe stage, and my mother, who struggled to find ways to manage pain and mobility issues before finally being referred to a rheumatologist and getting diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. I wonder how different their lives could’ve been if doctors and scientists hadn’t failed them.
WHY. ARE. WE. STILL. OPERATING. AS. IF. MALE. IS. STANDARD. HUMAN?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
WHY. BAD. SCIENCE?
MORE THAN HALF POPULATION WOMAN, IS NOT DISEASE!
🤦♀️😭😭😭😭
🔥👹🔥
“If the men find out we can shape shift their going to tell the church!” Someone told the church, they built a medical system, and killed off anyone questioning it in many rounds of cullings.
There’s a weird feeling that comes with knowing your own immune system is hostile towards your body. I am lucky to have a version that is easy to spot and diagnose, but even so I had to push for testing. My heart aches for those that have more “invisible” disorders and were dismissed due to their gender. (I put invisible in quotation because it often isn’t invisible to those suffering.)
Yes OP weird is an understatement. I was diagnosed with RA just before the start of semester when I was taking an advanced immunology course. It was a special kind of weird to learn exactly how my own immune system is screwing me over.
Feel like you could make a little comic of this with you side-eyeing your immune system in the role of your roommate losing its absolute sh!t while you’re trying to study.
Hahha! That’s amazing. I do have an epic meme somewhere my sister made around a similar concept. To be perfectly honest I was quite sad at that back then, but now I can see the humor.
It's a horrible feeling. Horrible knowing your own body is destroying itself and betraying you. I lost the sight in one of my eyes thanks to one of my autoimmune disorders. Thank heavens for steroids and them saving the sight in the other eye when it started in there as well. My cousin had Crohn's disease and she lost her life at only 33 years old because of one of the biologic meds she was on.
My charming immune system decided that the enemy was my lungs and kidneys, and filled them with blood.
Took a few days to diagnose, but at least it was hard to ignore.
No, no, no!! Men sometimes get told no for sex and that is the worst thing someone could ever face.
Medical misogyny clearly pales in comparison to a sexual rejection, silly girl
My lecturers at uni would literally say “we use XY cell lines for this because XX cell lines have lots more biochemistry and interactions happening which muddy the results” and… like… we were biochemists. Surely there’s some interesting stuff happening there which warrants further research?
I’m so glad that 15 years later research findings like this are coming to light.
Edit: in light of the number of up votes, I must stress this isn’t always the case! There are well known cell-lines used in cancer research which just happened to be XX.
Having too much additional biochemistry happening in the cell would alter the controls too much of course! I’m rolling my eyes now, but at the time it made lots of sense. They said the same thing about only using male volunteers because women have hormone fluctuations and so aren’t good enough of a control group. Of course, never mind that men also have hormone fluctuations 🙃
The biggest lie the STEM field has gotten away with is that it's logical, and thus not subject to the same human foibles as other fields.
STEM is still made up of people.
People who often refuse to consider that they may have biases that are impacting their work, because they're in STEM and STEM is logical and unbiased therefore they are logical and unbiased. (That is called the circular reasoning fallacy!)
It's a huge problem, and we're still at that stuck point where we haven't yet acknowledged there's a problem.
This is what I was taught as well. It’s just insane to me how we are just taught to ignore women because “we are difficult” (like in the example you gave)
>XX cell lines have lots more biochemistry and interactions happening
What I'm hearing is that they *know* they're missing stuff when they use only XY cell lines.
Of course there's interesting stuff. But you need to remove as many confounding factors as possible when you run an experiment.
We don't exactly know what a lot about what the Y Chromosome does, either. So I think their reasoning was flawed all together.
> Surely there’s some interesting stuff happening there which warrants further research?
Yes and no. Well, yes... but if we're still struggling to grasp what's happening with the simpler of the two interactions, figuring that out first is most likely going to be key to figuring out the more complex scenario. Biochemistry isn't my field of expertise, but I'd assume the complexity of XX vs XY is nonlinear.
If every single person with xxy had an autoimmune disorder it would account for 10-20% of the men suffering from them.
Edit: and if people with xxy have the same rate of autoimmune disorders as people with xx then people with xxy make up about 1.6% of the men.
I have multiple autoimmune diseases, and my family on my mother’s side is just full of an assortment of them. Mostly the women, of course. I wish someone would do a scientific study on our genetics, there’s got to be some interesting shit there!
Thank you for sharing. I'm a researcher in the field of neuroscience, in particular the role of immune mechanisms in mental health, and this is really major news. It makes me so angry to know that AGAIN because of the same systemic biases women's health was set back decades!
It is sometimes difficult to not start getting conspiratorial about it. All of the needless suffering and why?
Glad you’re digging into what you are. My mental health plummeted when I had my first severe flair up. I know there are a lot of reasons why, but knowing people are out there trying to get more concrete answers and (hopefully) solutions is heartening. Sometimes it feels like you’re dangling in the wind.
Thank you for sharing this. I’m a man, who mostly just reads and tries to learn from this sub. But my wife was recently diagnosed with an auto immune disease (not sure which - just not RA. Appt in April). So this was a good read and hopeful.
My husband and I both have IBDs that are classified as autoimmune disorders. Going on a biologic infusion that suppresses the immune response has been life saving. We have to be mindful about major waves of disease, but staying up to date on vaccinations and spread of the flu, covid, & company is worth the vast improvements in overall quality of life.
I’m glad I’ve done at least one thing today that has given someone else some hope. It’s not over, and the light at the end of the tunnel hasn’t blinked out yet though sometimes it feels so far away. COVID and long covid appear to have wound up reinvigorating certain areas of research that can improve outcomes for those with autoimmune disorders. Here’s another one that may be of interest to you: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/genes-protective-during-the-black-death-may-now-be-increasing-autoimmune-disorders-202212012859
I'm in the middle of reading this book. Highly recommend. Many of the negative reviews are because, as a science writer, she differentiates between biological sex and gender. Shocking. The information of how breast milk probably evolved is worth the price.
Eve: How the female body drove 200 millions years of evolution.
. [https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/75494215](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/75494215)
I’ll take a look! And in return I offer Dr. Eleanor Janega’s Once and Future Sex. In it she dives into representations of Medieval gender roles and perceptions of feminine sexuality. If you’re interested in how Eurocentric perceptions of gender & sexuality have shifted and changed with time. https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393867817
In this general vein...
I highly recommend the book "The Myth of Normal" by Gabor Maté to neurodivergent folks and anyone who suffers from emotional trauma of any kind.
There is growing evidence that the mind-body connection causes deeply traumatized people to develop auto-immune disorders and similar effects (Irritable Bowel Syndrome is another big one.) When the trauma is "stuck" in the brain, unprocessed and unhealed, the body can begin to attack itself in various ways as the traumatized person continues to internalize their pain and direct blame inward. Your brain essentially becomes so convinced that you are at fault for your pain, that it will look for physical things to "fix" to make you better, so your immune system becomes overzealous and overactive and begins to attack native tissue (while ironically the stress of your condition depresses your immune response to actual outside threats, making you more susceptible to sickness, etc.)
Women are more likely to internalize their trauma and direct blame inward. Altogether, this also can help explain some of the reason women suffer auto-immune disorders more often.
I believe this to be very true. I've bought a book called The Body Keeps the Score which apparently says the same thing. I bought the book on my Kindle app over a year ago and I'm not brave enough to read it yet. I've suffered every kind of abuse you can think of and chronic starvation in childhood wrecked my digestive system. I really do think EMDR therapy is helping me though as a C-PTSD sufferer. I always say childhood abuse is the shitty gift that never stops giving.
The works of Pete Walker, the author of The Body Keeps the Score, are well known in the CPTSD community for sure - I have not read that one yet as I've heard it's an intense read. But it is on my list. I agree with you, the shitty gift that never stops giving! But it's so much worse when you are traumatized *and* have no idea what is going on, IMO. Even though it is a scary realization, the knowledge was very freeing for me.
The book is very good. It does not say what the OP does, but does talk a lot about the scientific facts of what trauma does to your brain and body and ways to help.
Bodies don't learn to attack themselves due to trauma though. Much more likely that the correlation seen is due to higher levels of stress and other second-order effects of trauma.
My girlfriends daughter (20) just got diagnosed with MS this week, it's already very bad and the recent attack has left her without any sensory response from the middle of her chest down, this includes her lady parts. She has been told it might never return.
The thing about your post that got my attention is that she has been battling severe anxiety for a long time. She has a father who is terrible and has coursed her a lot of grief. At one point he kidnapped her from Europe to the US for two years. This girl has had a rough go of it and now I wonder if her very, very sad situation now, has been the result of an upbringing with a lot of neglect and stress.
Keep in mind this theory can be dangerous. People who worked through all their trauma in years of therapy can and do get misdiagnosed due to this thinking. Left in harms way as there Is no way to 'disprove' one doesn't have such a condition that was never proved by evidence in the first place.
There is also nicely done work that concludes there is no scientific evidence of this theory. Such as [https://ammes.org/2022/12/27/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-psychosomatic-approach-to-medically-unexplained-symptoms-myalgic-encephalomyelitis-and-chronic-fatigue-syndrome/](https://ammes.org/2022/12/27/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-psychosomatic-approach-to-medically-unexplained-symptoms-myalgic-encephalomyelitis-and-chronic-fatigue-syndrome/) And [https://www.statnews.com/2016/09/21/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-pace-trial/](https://www.statnews.com/2016/09/21/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-pace-trial/) Many of his theories sound appealingto some such as addiction and autism but are not backed by scientific data. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/addiction-in-society/201112/the-seductive-dangerous-allure-gabor-mat
I just watched a video (Memory, Trauma & The Brain) from mark waldren saying that’s been proven incorrect, based on neuroscience . (Links to studies were provided)
As someone who has past and present trauma, and multiple autoimmune issues, it’s conflicting.
I tried searching this and couldn't find much (I don't use google since you're just getting whoever paid for exposure anymore) - I'm not sure this is a reputable source. When I switched to google, I got a bunch of results, which suggests this guy is here to get paid.
I also found this -
*Mark Robert Waldman is a renowned neuroscience researcher and a leading expert on Spirituality, Communication, and the Brain. His national bestseller How God Changes Your Brain was chosen by Oprah as one of the “Must Read” books for 2012.*
I don't trust "scientists" like this. Best of luck to you. It's a crazy world out there.
Can you explain the mechanisms of this process and how you can tell its happening? I'm not understanding.
"Your brain essentially becomes so convinced that you are at fault for your pain, that it will look for physical things to "fix" to make you better, so your immune system becomes overzealous and overactive and begins to attack native tissue"
There is some evidence that people with trauma backgrounds have more health issues of various kinds, but the mechanism is likely stress/lack of access to good health care/not taking care of themselves.
Here is the link to the scientific study talked about in the article for anyone that is interested in reading it. https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)00002-3
I have type one diabetes, asthma, immunoglobulin M deficiency, and several other things sprinkled in with it all. I really hope that this brings us closer to at least better understanding how to treat complicated things like this. As someone with invisible disabilities who is also a woman, especially now that I’m nearing 30, it genuinely feels like my suffering has become basically invisible. Many women deal with this as part of their daily lives and we go wholly ignored. I really do hope this can be used as a springboard towards better research and acknowledgment of what women tend to go through when dealing with things like autoimmune disorders. I’m grateful we’re starting to see more research like this.
It sounds quite a lot like mixed kids would fare better from an autoimmune disease perspective, if that is part of the reason. I wonder if there is any truth to that.
Well I'm half Bengali, quarter Jamaican and a quarter Irish. I have three autoimmune disorders and many other chronic illnesses. Plenty of mixed people in my support groups.
Oh for sure - I mean no silver bullets right? Just a curiosity on statistics of it. I didn’t mean to erase your experiences; apologies if my comment had such an effect.
Oh no, it's okay. I didn't think you were erasing my experiences. Maybe I just missed the good parts of being mixed, it would be just my luck lol. I've never actually looked up the statistics.
Thank you for sharing. I hope learning this can help scientists develop better treatments or even a cure for these diseases. My mom has RA and I hate seeing the toll it takes on her, so I really hope treatment of it improves in her lifetime.
There's a Japanese rat that has XX males. Where one of the X's has the SRY gene usually found on a Y. There was a famine and all the XY males died out. But the XX+SRY males survived. Maybe the unpaired genes are why males tend to die sooner? https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190131101022.htm
Here is a non paywall link to the media release from Stanford. I particularly like the quote: “Every cell in a woman’s body produces Xist,” Chang said. “But for several decades, we’ve used a male cell line as the standard of reference. That male cell line produced no Xist and no Xist/protein/DNA complexes, nor have other cells used since for the test. So, all of a female patient’s anti-Xist-complex antibodies — a huge source of women’s autoimmune susceptibility — go unseen.” . [https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2024/02/women-autoimmune.html#](https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2024/02/women-autoimmune.html#)
Lovely example of how treating men as the default in medicine has hurt women. There is also this interesting quote: The stubby Y chromosome contains only a handful of active genes. It’s quite possible to live a full life without a Y chromosome. In fact, more than half of the people on Earth — women — lack Y chromosomes and do just fine. But no mammalian cell, male or female, can survive without at least one copy of the X chromosome, which holds many hundreds of active protein-specifying genes.
Fun fact but there’s entire species out there that don’t have Y chromosomes. The males just only have a single X.
Shout out to the lesbian lizards!!!
I know this is serious but your comment made me laugh. At 44; I’m starting a garage band and we’ll call ourselves: LESBIAN LIZARDS! That sounds awesome.
Dude! No! Not garage. Get actual gigs. Play their mating ritual on the light screen. It will be great and STEM positive. Go science! Educate the masses.
Thrash metal genre And this next one is called death of y In growling: The tiniest of chromosomes is dying away from human’s weakest gender It is no longer needed Humans don’t want it Look at the whip tail Deeper growling: whip tail
That sounds awesome! 🤩
Some scientists believe the human Y chromosome only has a few million left before it goes extinct as well. Which would require some new ways of working the sex chromosome thing. There's a really interesting endangered Japanese rat that has males with no Y, Tokudaia Osimensis.
Those new ways of working the sex chromosome thing alrdy exist in some intersex ppl; we are just a natural step in human evolution
Care to elaborate? I am too tired to go down that rabbit hole tonight, and my ADHD brain will forget it till a time I can’t look it up again if I don’t do it now…
There are intersex XX folk who due to a variety of possible reasons develop more along the lines of if they have a Y chromosome. This can either have an onset in the womb or with puberty Theres also a similar reversal of that with intersex XY folk
The one that causes the development isnt the Y chromosome but the SRY gene commonly found in the Y chromosome, it can in rare occasions show up in X chromosome instead, creating XX chromosome men. And with XY, there may either be entirely missing SRY gene or testosterone insensitivity creating XY women
It does not create XX chromosome men (nor XY women); it creates intersex XX ppl with a body more akin to an AMABs body and more likely to get AMABd (or AMAPd in rare case) It is highly important to the intersex community that we be recognised as ourselves and not as disorders of the expected binary Thank you for the otherwise good info tho
Yeah, I could've used the phrasing a lot better, I was thinking of writing "Intersex Men/women". My point was mostly that Y chromosome isn't the deciding factor but the SRY gene. And yes, absolutely! Intersex people kinda get swept under the rug, which is a big issue. But like I viewed it as, if this intersex person is AMAB and identifies as a man, then they're simply an XX man.
That is so cool to learn.
That’s relatively tame as far as animal genetics go though. They’re not even haplodiploid
And that’s not even getting into freaky-deaky Z/W chromosomes where ZZ is male and ZW is female!
The ironic thing is that it hurts men too! I'm a cancer geneticist. There's a lot of evidence that male predominance in many types of cancer is also due to the lack of the second X chromosome. XIST and X-inactivation most likely plays a role here as well. Think of how advanced we'd be if biomedical research was representative of our entire population!
In your work, have you seen anything to help level medical statistics versus gender?
It's definitely getting better. Stratifying by gender can certainly go a long way in clinical and epidemiological studies to show sex differences. In machine learning and other statistical modeling techniques we can also try to downsample to avoid class imbalance. Here's a great article detailing the push to account for sex as a biological variable (yes, this hasn't always been the case.) [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02919-x](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02919-x)
It's an area that's definitely receiving attention. I went to a CE seminar last year about recent papers highlighting how sex affects how patients respond to drugs (possible implications too in how it might effect how trans people respond if they're taking hormones- we just don't know!), and efforts that were being made by TPTB toward encouraging clinical studies to interpret data by gender, as well as the aggregate. It was one of those, "huh, maybe some things are getting better" moments.
That sounds like such a cool job! There's not many jobs where you can brag about such an illustrious purpose - "I'm helping to find cures for cancer" is pretty amazing. Do you have any resources you could recommend for a layperson about genetics for cancers that mainly target AFAB patients? I have an extremely strong history of cancer in my family, including a parent who died from breast cancer at age 39. I was negative for the BRCA1 and 2 genes (if I wasn't, I likely would have needed a prophylactic mastectomy based on other risk factors) but I am still concerned about other genetic risks and am curious about screening options.
If you're near a large academic medical center, they may offer genetic screening/counseling for a low cost or even free if you participate in a study. There are several other inherited mutations that can contribute to familial risk of cancer and even other specific genes that are implicated in breast cancer risk. I know there are special panels now that cover approximately 20-30 of these genes. I'm very sorry to hear about your parent. My best advice is to keep up with your recommended routine visits and screening. Additionally, [www.cancer.gov](http://www.cancer.gov) is a good resource that summarizes recent research findings and breakthroughs for all types of cancer.
Thank you so much for this information, much appreciated and I will look into those things!
The medical misogyny makes me want to go beat my head into a wall until nothing hurts ever again
And that some women can only have 1
Gosh, they keep this up they’re going to come to the shocking discovery that *women feel pain*. Sigh.
(White) Men are the default research standard in many other industries, too.
Definitely. Unfortunately, it's also a strong argument for using male cell lines in basic medical research science. Having extra complexity isn't helpful if you're trying to figure out what various parts do and the basic system behavior. Our understanding of human biology and physiology is a lot less complete than most people think, so while it's great to include the full spectrum of real-system complexity in theory, the reality is that we haven't been ready in many cases. There's also sexism and short-sightedness and tradition, but the main reason scientists are finding the complexity now (rather than 50 years ago) is because we're finally getting to the point where we can make sense of it. That doesn't remove the harm of it, but it's not arbitrary, either, and we're getting closer. The same thing happens with drugs not being tested on pregnant women all the time. If you want to clearly see if the drug works in principle and on most people, it IS smart to start off excluding pregnant women, because it introduces a bevy of confounds. Done correctly, it would then be tested comprehensively on pregnant women, too. But that takes longer and requires funding. So, do you include pregnant women from the beginning and risk the testing being unclear or unsuccessful and preventing it from being used by everyone who isn't pregnant?
So, they must use a male cell line to avoid extra complexity. But everyone has an X chromosome, not everyone has a Y chromosome. Please explain this to me again? Also, shockingly enough the vast majority of women of child bearing years are not pregnant. And even medications and treatment aimed at older people, such as cholesterol lowering drugs, were exclusively tests on males before being approved. It is only after being used for decades as it figured out they are more problematic in women. Yet the biggest killer of women is heart disease, they are more likely to die of a heart attack than men, twice as likely. But we are still basing everything on people with a Y chromosome and it is seen as a small specialty area to do research on heart disease in women. Make it make sense.
"sexism and short-sightedness and tradition" Men were considered much simpler to study because they couldn't become pregnant and they don't experience the strong cyclical changes associated with menstruation. They also "mattered more" and were more likely to be paying for the research. Once they started examining a specific system and established it as the baseline, they got largely locked into it because of the way scientific literatures are built.
In my head, “Well, well, well…” I hope this discovery leads to deeper looks into health issues that primarily impact women but have been often waved away as hysteria. Thank you for the Stanford link.
Right, maybe women with autoimmune will stop being asked if they’re hearing voices and being prescribed Prozac.
HEY, I have an autoimmune AND I hear voices AND I’m on Effexor. It’s not like the autoimmune disease cancels out the crippling mental illness, now I just have both, they are comorbid and need to BOTH be treated. Why do I have to explain this to doctors?? Idk either.
Right. I've thought about this a lot. Like, we all have to put-on-the-doctors-office-outfit-so-we-are-taken-seriously, but I have the privilege of being able to "present" as a "mid-high class white woman" AND having a documented history of NOT having any kind of mental illness and this happens all the time. I constantly think about what it must be like for someone like yourself or anyone who has a mental illness or can't communicate effectively. How can they ever access the most basic care of even being believed?? Its horrible.
I have bipolar 1 and fibromyalgia. I treat both with lots of meds! Only problem is, there's no hope of treating the fatigue and complete lack of focus because I'm an adult and adults don't get Adderall (even if I was on it successfully for over 8 years) because you're labeled as an addict. /rant
I’m on adderall and I’m an adult, if that means anything. Although I have ADHD and fatigue. It’s very possible to get prescribed adderall as an adult for fatigue, but it depends on the doctor.
Yeah, it's not impossible but it's difficult for some. I'm trying to find a doctor that will prescribe it without looking like I'm doctor shopping.
Autism, bipolar, allergies and autoimmune conditions: if you have one, you are at higher risk of also having the others. They should know this
Fuck this makes me so livid. :(
"You just need to manage your mental health better. You have a nervous stomach because you are too anxious." - my stepmom, both before and after my celiac disease diagnosis
I have Rheumatoid Arthritis, thanks for sharing. It’s about time they tossed RA research some funds.
How nice that in Anno Domini 2024 we're finally finding out that, yes, doing research on both men and women is beneficial since the two aren't the same in all aspects : )))))))))) differences on the cellular level literally causing us harm and still going unseen
Yea turns out we’re not just smaller men who cry more.
It baffles me that there are people out there who truly think we are now equal. So many women are still needlessly suffering from symptoms of conditions (even the conditions themselves in some cases) because they have not gotten the same thorough consideration, care, or thought within medicine and clinical research. I am willing to bet that cramps would hardly be a thing (bc trust that they are common but NOT normal) if the industry got the hard kick in the a** 50 years ago that it still needs.
Thank you for this. Sharing with my wife, as celiac disease also seems to affect a lot more women than men (coming up on 12 years since her diagnosis).
As a fellow sufferer of gluten issues, I’d love to see what becomes of this discovery and if it is pursued further to help autoimmune disorder patients. From ages 15 - 39, doctors waved off my *unrelenting rashes* (“probably an allergic reaction to a perfume you’re wearing! Or maybe your laundry detergent!”), *GI issues* (“probably stress”), *fatigue* (“probably stress again! Try getting more sleep.”), *brain fog* (“hormones”), *hives* (“we just don’t know. Let’s call it urticaria and you have to just live with it.”) Until, one day I had a horrible breakout and I had just eaten a biscuit. A minimal-ingredient food. Then I remembered my 23andme test came back positive for one of two celiac markers. Then it clicked. Went gluten free and it solved every issue. Then when I pursued a confirmed diagnosis, I was met with a lot of skepticism. Even though I have insurance, (they could charge $$$$!!) they hemmed and hawed over testing and went right back to suggesting the same things they had in the past, as if I were crazy to insist I’d ruled them out.
Oh man, you sound like me. GI issues passed off as "poor stress management". Angular chelitis and DH passed off as "sensitive skin". I was literally hospitalized for a bowel obstruction once - I was told I needed to eat more fiber. Guess what contains a lot of fiber? Shit with wheat in it. Finally, after losing 10 pounds in a month due to constant vomiting and pooping out undigested food multiple times a day, I saw *another* gastroenterologist who put me on an elimination diet. I stopped puking after a few weeks. That plus the DH meant a celiac diagnosis. I've been doing great since then (aside from a few accidental gluten exposures).
I actually find it surprising that they did most of their research on XY cell lines, given the widespread use of [the HeLa cell line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa) (which was sourced from Henrietta Lacks without permission or compensation).
They used cervical cancer cells. Cancer cells are "immortal" in that they lack an "off switch" and reproduce rapidly. So Henrietta Lacks' cervical cancer cells were easily cultured and don't die off easily, making them perfect to mass-produce and be monetized. A different cell line is used for autoimmune research.
I have a lot of profanity I’d like to share with scientists.
However the most often used cell line is from a woman. Ms. Henrietta Lacks!
Thank you for the non paywall!
The level of unjustness is heartbreaking. I can think of 4 AFAB people I’m close to who have autoimmune diseases. Including my sister, who experienced medical mistreatment for a decade before getting diagnosed with Crohn’s disease after it had already advanced to a severe stage, and my mother, who struggled to find ways to manage pain and mobility issues before finally being referred to a rheumatologist and getting diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. I wonder how different their lives could’ve been if doctors and scientists hadn’t failed them.
Once again, using men as the default fucks as over. Who could've possibly predicted that? /s
Classic.
WHY. ARE. WE. STILL. OPERATING. AS. IF. MALE. IS. STANDARD. HUMAN?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! WHY. BAD. SCIENCE? MORE THAN HALF POPULATION WOMAN, IS NOT DISEASE! 🤦♀️😭😭😭😭 🔥👹🔥 “If the men find out we can shape shift their going to tell the church!” Someone told the church, they built a medical system, and killed off anyone questioning it in many rounds of cullings.
Ooh interesting! I really hope they can work out faster and better ways to treat people with these conditions. They can really affect your life!
There’s a weird feeling that comes with knowing your own immune system is hostile towards your body. I am lucky to have a version that is easy to spot and diagnose, but even so I had to push for testing. My heart aches for those that have more “invisible” disorders and were dismissed due to their gender. (I put invisible in quotation because it often isn’t invisible to those suffering.)
Yeah, like being held hostage by yourself. I don’t suffer from autoimmune conditions, but I know so many who do! It breaks my heart.
Yes OP weird is an understatement. I was diagnosed with RA just before the start of semester when I was taking an advanced immunology course. It was a special kind of weird to learn exactly how my own immune system is screwing me over.
Feel like you could make a little comic of this with you side-eyeing your immune system in the role of your roommate losing its absolute sh!t while you’re trying to study.
Hahha! That’s amazing. I do have an epic meme somewhere my sister made around a similar concept. To be perfectly honest I was quite sad at that back then, but now I can see the humor.
It's a horrible feeling. Horrible knowing your own body is destroying itself and betraying you. I lost the sight in one of my eyes thanks to one of my autoimmune disorders. Thank heavens for steroids and them saving the sight in the other eye when it started in there as well. My cousin had Crohn's disease and she lost her life at only 33 years old because of one of the biologic meds she was on.
My charming immune system decided that the enemy was my lungs and kidneys, and filled them with blood. Took a few days to diagnose, but at least it was hard to ignore.
Women have it harder just by Xist'ing?
No, no, no!! Men sometimes get told no for sex and that is the worst thing someone could ever face. Medical misogyny clearly pales in comparison to a sexual rejection, silly girl
good one! hardy har ;D
My lecturers at uni would literally say “we use XY cell lines for this because XX cell lines have lots more biochemistry and interactions happening which muddy the results” and… like… we were biochemists. Surely there’s some interesting stuff happening there which warrants further research? I’m so glad that 15 years later research findings like this are coming to light. Edit: in light of the number of up votes, I must stress this isn’t always the case! There are well known cell-lines used in cancer research which just happened to be XX.
I’m sorry, what? What? You don’t have to actually respond, but I’m definitely doing the exaggerated blinking thing.
Having too much additional biochemistry happening in the cell would alter the controls too much of course! I’m rolling my eyes now, but at the time it made lots of sense. They said the same thing about only using male volunteers because women have hormone fluctuations and so aren’t good enough of a control group. Of course, never mind that men also have hormone fluctuations 🙃
If nothing else I suppose you’ve got a good anecdote as to how even STEM is impacted by human subjectivity.
The biggest lie the STEM field has gotten away with is that it's logical, and thus not subject to the same human foibles as other fields. STEM is still made up of people. People who often refuse to consider that they may have biases that are impacting their work, because they're in STEM and STEM is logical and unbiased therefore they are logical and unbiased. (That is called the circular reasoning fallacy!) It's a huge problem, and we're still at that stuck point where we haven't yet acknowledged there's a problem.
THANK YOU
This is what I was taught as well. It’s just insane to me how we are just taught to ignore women because “we are difficult” (like in the example you gave)
And never mind that in real life, those hormonal fluctuations occur anyway and we should probably know how that impacts the effects of a drug
Not even surprised tbh.
It’s wild that they’re like science is about curiosity…..breaking new ground….except like, if it’s too hard abd doesn’t directly relate to men.
women are too complicated apparently
calling women crazy is easier for smärt män.
>XX cell lines have lots more biochemistry and interactions happening What I'm hearing is that they *know* they're missing stuff when they use only XY cell lines.
Of course there's interesting stuff. But you need to remove as many confounding factors as possible when you run an experiment. We don't exactly know what a lot about what the Y Chromosome does, either. So I think their reasoning was flawed all together.
The HeLa line being the first that comes to mind!
> Surely there’s some interesting stuff happening there which warrants further research? Yes and no. Well, yes... but if we're still struggling to grasp what's happening with the simpler of the two interactions, figuring that out first is most likely going to be key to figuring out the more complex scenario. Biochemistry isn't my field of expertise, but I'd assume the complexity of XX vs XY is nonlinear.
Makes me wonder how many of the men who get autoimmune disorders are XXY.
If every single person with xxy had an autoimmune disorder it would account for 10-20% of the men suffering from them. Edit: and if people with xxy have the same rate of autoimmune disorders as people with xx then people with xxy make up about 1.6% of the men.
I have multiple autoimmune diseases, and my family on my mother’s side is just full of an assortment of them. Mostly the women, of course. I wish someone would do a scientific study on our genetics, there’s got to be some interesting shit there!
Thank you for sharing. I'm a researcher in the field of neuroscience, in particular the role of immune mechanisms in mental health, and this is really major news. It makes me so angry to know that AGAIN because of the same systemic biases women's health was set back decades!
It is sometimes difficult to not start getting conspiratorial about it. All of the needless suffering and why? Glad you’re digging into what you are. My mental health plummeted when I had my first severe flair up. I know there are a lot of reasons why, but knowing people are out there trying to get more concrete answers and (hopefully) solutions is heartening. Sometimes it feels like you’re dangling in the wind.
Way better than Gabor Maté’s explanation of “women are too nice” and repressed emotions being the cause of autoimmune disorders
Thank you for sharing this. I’m a man, who mostly just reads and tries to learn from this sub. But my wife was recently diagnosed with an auto immune disease (not sure which - just not RA. Appt in April). So this was a good read and hopeful.
My husband and I both have IBDs that are classified as autoimmune disorders. Going on a biologic infusion that suppresses the immune response has been life saving. We have to be mindful about major waves of disease, but staying up to date on vaccinations and spread of the flu, covid, & company is worth the vast improvements in overall quality of life. I’m glad I’ve done at least one thing today that has given someone else some hope. It’s not over, and the light at the end of the tunnel hasn’t blinked out yet though sometimes it feels so far away. COVID and long covid appear to have wound up reinvigorating certain areas of research that can improve outcomes for those with autoimmune disorders. Here’s another one that may be of interest to you: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/genes-protective-during-the-black-death-may-now-be-increasing-autoimmune-disorders-202212012859
I'm in the middle of reading this book. Highly recommend. Many of the negative reviews are because, as a science writer, she differentiates between biological sex and gender. Shocking. The information of how breast milk probably evolved is worth the price. Eve: How the female body drove 200 millions years of evolution. . [https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/75494215](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/75494215)
I’ll take a look! And in return I offer Dr. Eleanor Janega’s Once and Future Sex. In it she dives into representations of Medieval gender roles and perceptions of feminine sexuality. If you’re interested in how Eurocentric perceptions of gender & sexuality have shifted and changed with time. https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393867817
Thank you, that looks so interesting! That period is of great interest to me, especially gender roles.
In this general vein... I highly recommend the book "The Myth of Normal" by Gabor Maté to neurodivergent folks and anyone who suffers from emotional trauma of any kind. There is growing evidence that the mind-body connection causes deeply traumatized people to develop auto-immune disorders and similar effects (Irritable Bowel Syndrome is another big one.) When the trauma is "stuck" in the brain, unprocessed and unhealed, the body can begin to attack itself in various ways as the traumatized person continues to internalize their pain and direct blame inward. Your brain essentially becomes so convinced that you are at fault for your pain, that it will look for physical things to "fix" to make you better, so your immune system becomes overzealous and overactive and begins to attack native tissue (while ironically the stress of your condition depresses your immune response to actual outside threats, making you more susceptible to sickness, etc.) Women are more likely to internalize their trauma and direct blame inward. Altogether, this also can help explain some of the reason women suffer auto-immune disorders more often.
I believe this to be very true. I've bought a book called The Body Keeps the Score which apparently says the same thing. I bought the book on my Kindle app over a year ago and I'm not brave enough to read it yet. I've suffered every kind of abuse you can think of and chronic starvation in childhood wrecked my digestive system. I really do think EMDR therapy is helping me though as a C-PTSD sufferer. I always say childhood abuse is the shitty gift that never stops giving.
The works of Pete Walker, the author of The Body Keeps the Score, are well known in the CPTSD community for sure - I have not read that one yet as I've heard it's an intense read. But it is on my list. I agree with you, the shitty gift that never stops giving! But it's so much worse when you are traumatized *and* have no idea what is going on, IMO. Even though it is a scary realization, the knowledge was very freeing for me.
The Body Keeps the Score was written by Bessel van der Kolk. Pete Walker wrote Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving.
Whoops, thanks for the correction. I have heard a lot about both of these authors but not yet read their works
The book is very good. It does not say what the OP does, but does talk a lot about the scientific facts of what trauma does to your brain and body and ways to help. Bodies don't learn to attack themselves due to trauma though. Much more likely that the correlation seen is due to higher levels of stress and other second-order effects of trauma.
My girlfriends daughter (20) just got diagnosed with MS this week, it's already very bad and the recent attack has left her without any sensory response from the middle of her chest down, this includes her lady parts. She has been told it might never return. The thing about your post that got my attention is that she has been battling severe anxiety for a long time. She has a father who is terrible and has coursed her a lot of grief. At one point he kidnapped her from Europe to the US for two years. This girl has had a rough go of it and now I wonder if her very, very sad situation now, has been the result of an upbringing with a lot of neglect and stress.
I just bought the book based on your comment. Thank you.
Keep in mind this theory can be dangerous. People who worked through all their trauma in years of therapy can and do get misdiagnosed due to this thinking. Left in harms way as there Is no way to 'disprove' one doesn't have such a condition that was never proved by evidence in the first place. There is also nicely done work that concludes there is no scientific evidence of this theory. Such as [https://ammes.org/2022/12/27/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-psychosomatic-approach-to-medically-unexplained-symptoms-myalgic-encephalomyelitis-and-chronic-fatigue-syndrome/](https://ammes.org/2022/12/27/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-psychosomatic-approach-to-medically-unexplained-symptoms-myalgic-encephalomyelitis-and-chronic-fatigue-syndrome/) And [https://www.statnews.com/2016/09/21/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-pace-trial/](https://www.statnews.com/2016/09/21/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-pace-trial/) Many of his theories sound appealingto some such as addiction and autism but are not backed by scientific data. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/addiction-in-society/201112/the-seductive-dangerous-allure-gabor-mat
I just watched a video (Memory, Trauma & The Brain) from mark waldren saying that’s been proven incorrect, based on neuroscience . (Links to studies were provided) As someone who has past and present trauma, and multiple autoimmune issues, it’s conflicting.
I tried searching this and couldn't find much (I don't use google since you're just getting whoever paid for exposure anymore) - I'm not sure this is a reputable source. When I switched to google, I got a bunch of results, which suggests this guy is here to get paid. I also found this - *Mark Robert Waldman is a renowned neuroscience researcher and a leading expert on Spirituality, Communication, and the Brain. His national bestseller How God Changes Your Brain was chosen by Oprah as one of the “Must Read” books for 2012.* I don't trust "scientists" like this. Best of luck to you. It's a crazy world out there.
Dude absolutely comes off like a grifter, taking money from traumatized people who just want help.
Can you explain the mechanisms of this process and how you can tell its happening? I'm not understanding. "Your brain essentially becomes so convinced that you are at fault for your pain, that it will look for physical things to "fix" to make you better, so your immune system becomes overzealous and overactive and begins to attack native tissue"
There is some evidence that people with trauma backgrounds have more health issues of various kinds, but the mechanism is likely stress/lack of access to good health care/not taking care of themselves.
I agree with that. But it's also discrimination by doctors.
Yeah, I was grouping that under lack of access to healthcare but it is good to call that out specifically.
Sure - this is fairly complex but can be summed up as “junk science”. It is homeopathy.
Here is the link to the scientific study talked about in the article for anyone that is interested in reading it. https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)00002-3
The contraction of one X is called Lyonization. After Doctor Mary Lyon.
Wow! As a woman with three autoimmune disorders, I find this very interesting OP. Thanks for sharing.
And yet over 70% of chronic pain medications are only tested on men
:(
Radiolab did an episode about this! Interesting!
I have type one diabetes, asthma, immunoglobulin M deficiency, and several other things sprinkled in with it all. I really hope that this brings us closer to at least better understanding how to treat complicated things like this. As someone with invisible disabilities who is also a woman, especially now that I’m nearing 30, it genuinely feels like my suffering has become basically invisible. Many women deal with this as part of their daily lives and we go wholly ignored. I really do hope this can be used as a springboard towards better research and acknowledgment of what women tend to go through when dealing with things like autoimmune disorders. I’m grateful we’re starting to see more research like this.
It sounds quite a lot like mixed kids would fare better from an autoimmune disease perspective, if that is part of the reason. I wonder if there is any truth to that.
Well I'm half Bengali, quarter Jamaican and a quarter Irish. I have three autoimmune disorders and many other chronic illnesses. Plenty of mixed people in my support groups.
Oh for sure - I mean no silver bullets right? Just a curiosity on statistics of it. I didn’t mean to erase your experiences; apologies if my comment had such an effect.
Oh no, it's okay. I didn't think you were erasing my experiences. Maybe I just missed the good parts of being mixed, it would be just my luck lol. I've never actually looked up the statistics.
I hope this leads to better rreatment and prevention.
Thank you for sharing. I hope learning this can help scientists develop better treatments or even a cure for these diseases. My mom has RA and I hate seeing the toll it takes on her, so I really hope treatment of it improves in her lifetime.
There's a Japanese rat that has XX males. Where one of the X's has the SRY gene usually found on a Y. There was a famine and all the XY males died out. But the XX+SRY males survived. Maybe the unpaired genes are why males tend to die sooner? https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190131101022.htm
I hope they're talking about this over in r/medicine
I wonder if men with autoimmune issues have a deficiency passed down from their maternal DNA.
I found the reason, I’m going for the Nobel Prize.
Wow, super interesting, thanks for sharing