Age- and Sex-Specific Causal Effects of Adiposity on Cardiovascular Risk Factors

Observational studies have reported different effects of adiposity on cardiovascular risk factors across age and sex. Since cardiovascular risk factors are enriched in obese individuals, it has not been easy to dissect the effects of adiposity from those of other risk factors. We used a Mendelian randomization approach, applying a set of 32 genetic markers to estimate the causal effect of adiposity on blood pressure, glycemic indices, circulating lipid levels, and markers of inflammation and liver disease in up to 67,553 individuals. All analyses were stratified by age (cutoff 55 years of age) and sex. The genetic score was associated with BMI in both nonstratified analysis (P = 2.8 × 10(-107)) and stratified analyses (all P < 3.3 × 10(-30)). We found evidence of a causal effect of adiposity on blood pressure, fasting levels of insulin, C-reactive protein, interleukin-6, HDL cholesterol, and triglycerides in a nonstratified analysis and in the <55-year stratum. Further, we found evidence of a smaller causal effect on total cholesterol (P for difference = 0.015) in the ≥55-year stratum than in the <55-year stratum, a finding that could be explained by biology, survival bias, or differential medication. In conclusion, this study extends previous knowledge of the effects of adiposity by providing sex- and age-specific causal estimates on cardiovascular risk factors.

A rapid dot-blot assay to assess chimerism following sex-mismatched bone marrow transplantation

Mixed chimerism may occur more frequently than previously thought following allogeneic bone marrow transplantation and may have implications in terms of relapse, graft-versus-host disease and immune reconstitution. DNA analysis using single or multilocus polymorphic probes cannot reliably discriminate between donor and recipient cells below a level of 10%. We used probe pHY2.1, a cloned segment of tandemly repeated DNA (2000 copies) on the long arm of chromosome Y. A dot blot procedure allowed us to immobilize DNA directly from 50 microliter of peripheral blood or bone marrow. Cross-reactivity was eliminated by hybridization at conditions of extreme stringency (65 degrees C, 50% formamide). Mixing experiments detected male DNA at a level of 0.1% after 10 h exposure. Five patients were studied serially post-bone marrow transplantation. One patient showed mixed chimerism for 12 months, one had complete autologous recovery and the remaining three showed complete engraftment. All results were verified by standard karyotyping on bone marrow cells. This technique is a simple, rapid and sensitive assay for chimerism following sex mismatched bone marrow transplantation.

Gendered Violence and International Human Rights: Thinking Non-Discrimination Beyond the Sex Binary

The concept of non-discrimination has been central in the feminist challenge to gendered violence within international human rights law. This article critically explores non-discrimination and the challenge it seeks to pose to gendered violence through the work of Judith Butler. Drawing upon Butler’s critique of heteronormative sex/gender, the article utilises an understanding of gendered violence as effected by the restrictive scripts of sex/gender within heteronormativity to illustrate how the development of non-discrimination within international human rights law renders it ineffective to challenge gendered violence due to its own commitments to binarised and asymmetrical sex/gender. However, the article also seeks to encourage a reworking of non-discrimination beyond the heteronormative sex binary through employing Butler’s concept of cultural translation. Analysis via the lens of cultural translation reveals the fluidity of non-discrimination as a universal concept and offers new possibilities for feminist engagement with universal human rights.

Influence of sex on the survival of patients with esophageal cancer

PURPOSE: The prognostic value of sex for esophageal cancer survival is currently unclear, and growing data suggest that hormonal influences may account for incidence disparities between men and women. Therefore, moving from the hypothesis that hormones could affect the prognosis of patients with esophageal cancer, we investigated the primary hypothesis that sex is associated with survival and the secondary hypotheses that the relationship between sex and survival depends, at least in part, on age, histology, and race/ethnicity.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: By using the SEER databases from 1973 to 2007, we identified 13,603 patients (34%) with metastatic esophageal cancer (MEC) and 26,848 patients (66%) with locoregional esophageal cancer (LEC). Cox proportional hazards model for competing risks were used for analyses.

RESULTS: In the multivariate analysis, women had longer esophageal cancer-specific survival (ECSS) than men in both MEC (hazard ratio [HR], 0.949; 95% CI, 0.905 to 0.995; P = .029) and LEC (HR, 0.920; 95% CI, 0.886 to 0.955; P < .001) cohorts. When age and histology were accounted for, there was no difference for ECSS between men and women with adenocarcinoma. In contrast, women younger than age 55 years (HR, 0.896; 95% CI, 0.792 to 1.014; P = .081) and those age 55 years or older (HR, 0.905; 95% CI, 0.862 to 0.950; P < .001) with squamous cell LEC had longer ECSS than men. In the squamous cell MEC cohort, only women younger than age 55 years had longer ECSS (HR, 0.823; 95% CI, 0.708 to 0.957; P = .011) than men.

CONCLUSION: Sex is an independent prognostic factor for patients with LEC or MEC. As secondary hypotheses, in comparison with men, women age 55 years or older with squamous cell LEC and women younger than age 55 years with squamous cell MEC have a significantly better outcome. These last two findings need further validation.

Biometric gonioscopy and the effects of age, race, and sex on the anterior chamber angle.

AIM:

To utilise a novel method for making measurements in the anterior chamber in order to compare the anterior chamber angles of people of European, African, and east Asian descent aged 40 years and over.

METHODS:

A cross sectional study on 15 people of each sex from each decade from the 40s to the 70s, from each of three racial groups-black, white, and Chinese Singaporeans. Biometric gonioscopy (BG) utilises a slit lamp mounted reticule to make measurements from the apparent iris insertion to Schwalbe's line through a Goldmann one mirror goniolens. The main outcome measures were BG measurements of the anterior chamber angle as detailed above.

RESULTS:

There was no significant difference in angle measurement between black, white, and Chinese races in this study. However, at younger ages people of Chinese race appeared to have deeper angles than white or black people, whereas the angles of older Chinese were significantly narrower (p = 0.004 for the difference in slope of BG by age between Chinese and both black and white people).

CONCLUSION:

The failure to detect a difference in angle measurements between these groups was surprising, given the much higher prevalence of angle closure among Chinese. It appears that the overall apparent similarity of BG means between Chinese and Western populations may mask very different trends with age. The apparently more rapid decline in angle width measurements with age among Chinese may be due to the higher prevalence of cataract or "creeping angle closure." However, longitudinal inferences from cross sectional data are problematic, and this may represent a cohort phenomenon caused by the increasing prevalence of myopia in the younger Singaporean population.

Spatial variation in adult sex ratio across multiple scales in the invasive golden apple snail, Pomacea canaliculata

Adult sex ratio (ASR) has critical effects on behavior and life history and has implications for population demography, including the invasiveness of introduced species. ASR exhibits immense variation in nature, yet the scale dependence of this variation is rarely analyzed. In this study, using the generalized multilevel models, we investigated the variation in ASR across multiple nested spatial scales and analyzed the underlying causes for an invasive species, the golden apple snail Pomacea canaliculata. We partitioned the variance in ASR to describe the variations at different scales and then included the explanatory variables at the individual and group levels to analyze the potential causes driving the variation in ASR. We firstly determined there is a significant female-biased ASR for this species when accounting for the spatial and temporal autocorrelations of sampling. We found that, counter to nearly equal distributed variation at plot, habitat and region levels, ASR showed little variation at the town level. Temperature and precipitation at the region level were significantly positively associated with ASR, whereas the individual weight, the density characteristic, and sampling time were not significant factors influencing ASR. Our study suggests that offspring sex ratio of this species may shape the general pattern of ASR in the population level while the environmental variables at the region level translate the unbiased offspring sex ratio to the female-biased ASR. Future research should consider the implications of climate warming on the female-biased ASR of this invasive species and thus on invasion pattern.

Sex-related invariance across cultures in an online role-playing game

This study examines the Social Dominance Orientation of players of the online roleplaying game World of Warcraft. The World of Warcraft offers an opportunity to investigate social dominance and biological sex differences in an environment where there is no cultural dominance of one sex over another. Social Dominance Orientation has been found to be different between males and females, with males scoring higher. However, this might be the consequence of social context. To this end sex differences between male and female players were investigated in the World of Warcraft environment, as well as the effects of chosen character sex. Player sex and character sex were found to have effects on Social Dominance Orientation. These results add further support to claims that Social Dominance Orientation has the characteristics of a sexually selected disposition to acquire resources and out-compete rival groups.

The brain-sex theory of occupational choice: a counterexample

The brain-sex theory of occupational choice suggests that males and females in male-typical careers show a male pattern of cognitive ability in terms of better spatial than verbal performance on cognitive tests with the reverse pattern for females and males in female-typical careers, These differences are thought to result from patterns of cerebral functional lateralisation. This study Sought Such occupationally related effects using synonym generation (verbal ability) and mental rotation (spatial ability) tasks used previously. It also used entrants to these careers as participants to examine whether patterns of cognitive abilities might predate explicit training and practice. Using a population of entrants to sex-differentiated University Courses, a moderate occupational effect on the synonym generation task was found, along with a weak (p<.10) sex effect on the mental rotation task. Highest performance on the mental rotation task was by female Students in fashion design, a female-dominated occupation which makes substantial visuospatial demands and attracts many students with literacy problems such as dyslexia. This group then appears to be a counterexample to the brain-sex theory. However, methodological issues Surrounding previous Studies are highlighted: the simple synonym task appears to show limited discrimination of the sexes, leading to questions concerning the legitimacy of inferences about lateralisation based on scores from that test. Moreover, the human figure-based mental rotation task appears to tap the wrong aspect of visuospatial skill, likely to be needed for male-typical courses such as engineering, Since the fashion-clesign career is also one that attracts disproportionately many male students whose sexual orientation is homosexual, data were examined for evidence of female-typical patterns of cognitive performance among that subgroup. This was not found. This study therefore provides Do evidence for the claim that female-pattern cerebral functional lateralisation is likely in gay males.

Pilot study of the utility and acceptability of tampon sampling for the diagnosis of Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Chlamydia trachomatis infections by duplex realtime polymerase chain reaction in United Kingdom sex workers

We aimed to evaluate the acceptability of self-collected tampon samples for the screening of female sex workers for sexually transmitted infections. We recruited 65 sex workers, and 63 agreed to provide tampon samples. The tampon samples were processed by realtime polymerase chain reaction (PCR) targeting Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Chlamydia trachomatis. Urethral and endocervical swabs were also obtained from 61 of 63 participants and tested using culture (N. gonorrhoeae) and the BD ProbeTec strand displacement amplification (SDA) (C. trachomatis) assay. Tampon sampling was preferred by 95% of the women and all favoured being tested away from genitourinary medicine clinics; the most common reasons cited were avoidance of embarrassment (40%) and convenience (30%). Besides near-universal acceptability of tampon sampling, the tampon sampling-PCR approach described in this study appeared to have enhanced sensitivity compared with conventional testing, suggesting the possibility of a residual hidden burden of N. gonorrhoeae and/or C. trachomatis genital infections in UK female sex workers.

Radical interiors: Cindy Sherman's ‘Sex pictures’ and Kathy Acker's 'My mother: demonology'

In 1989, the American visual artist Cindy Sherman produced her ‘Sex Pictures’, a number of photographic images of two medical mannequins whose bodies had been dismembered and reconstructed to form abstract configurations that alluded to pornographic poses. Sherman's series was a response to the National Endowment for the Arts controversy, in which American artists such as Andres Serrano and the late Robert Mapplethorpe, whose work was considered obscene by the Republican Congress, were censored. Many artists in the culture-war period had their grants rescinded. The American avant-garde writer Kathy Acker published My Mother: Demonology in 1993. A prominent concern of Acker's in the work is what she termed her ‘writing freedom’ in a climate of cultural expurgation by the Republican elite. In particular, Acker was worried that she was ‘internalizing certain censorships’. This article addresses Sherman's and Acker's work in a comparative context to explore, through the theoretical work of Julia Kristeva, the ways in which their responses to a climate of political censorship can be read as forms of intimate revolt. Kristeva's notion of ejection—the act of placing something beyond the scope of the possible—transpires as ‘a condition of art's creation’ in Sherman's and Acker's work. Acker and Sherman use the pornographic reference in their work to disrupt and dislocate the narrative and image from convention in order to de-eroticize the body, against heteronormativity's terms, and empower the female sex organs. Eversion—that is, in Sherman's and Acker's works, the act of turning the institutional and maternal body inside out—emerges as a mode of resistance to the danger of the writer and the artist internalizing cultural restrictions. The everted body creates a site of radical interiority which becomes the (impossible) site for the radical (re-)embodiment of the feminine subject.