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Observable variations in human sex ratio at birth
Department of Chemistry, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; Department of Medicine, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; Institute of Genomics and Systems Biology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America.
Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
Örebro University, School of Medical Sciences. Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-6851-3297
Department of Medicine, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America. 3 Institute of Genomics and Systems Biology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America; Department of Human Genetics and Committee on Quantitative Methods in Social, Behavioral, and Health Sciences, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America.
2021 (English)In: PloS Computational Biology, ISSN 1553-734X, E-ISSN 1553-7358, Vol. 17, no 12, article id e1009586Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

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.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Public Library of Science (PLoS) , 2021. Vol. 17, no 12, article id e1009586
National Category
Public Health, Global Health, Social Medicine and Epidemiology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-95745DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009586ISI: 000726695100001PubMedID: 34855745OAI: oai:DiVA.org:oru-95745DiVA, id: diva2:1616581
Note

Funding agencies:

DARPA Big Mechanism program under ARO contract W911NF1410333

United States Department of Health & Human Services

National Institutes of Health (NIH) - USA R01HL122712  1P50MH094267  

U01HL108634-01  

King Abdullah University of Science & Technology FCS/1/4102-02-01  

FCC/1/1976-26-01 REI/1/0018-01-01 REI/1/4473-01-01 

Available from: 2021-12-03 Created: 2021-12-03 Last updated: 2021-12-16Bibliographically approved

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Larsson, Henrik

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