Tuesday, February 17, 2009

I'm sick because I'm a lefty?

I stumbled across this fact while reading Women and Autoimmune Disease and couldn't believe my eyes. So I did some investigating, and it's true: being left handed is strongly correlated with autoimmune illness. Here's the link to the study, and a clip from the abstract:
Geschwind, Galaburda, and Behan (GBG) have suggested that in utero levels of testosterone influence both cerebral and immune system developments (Geschwind and Behan, 1982; Geschwind and Galaburda, 1984; Geschwind and Galaburda, 1985). According to this theory, high levels of testosterone result in greater incidences of left-handedness, deviations from standard distribution of cerebral functions (known as anomalous dominance), and increased autoimmune dysfunction...

... First, it was predicted and found that left handers had a higher incidence of autoimmune diseases in their immediate families than did right handers. Second, those left handers with an incidence of at least one autoimmune disease were more strongly left-handed than were those with no incidence of autoimmunity.
Amazing. Watch out, lefty brothers and sisters...

No comments:

Post a Comment