You are what your mother eats: evidence for maternal preconception diet influencing foetal sex in humans

Mathews, Fiona; Johnson, Paul J.; Neil, Andrew

doi:10.1098/rspb.2008.0105

Cited by 127 publications

(117 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…Previous research has also specifically linked environmental exposures around the time of conception to fewer male births either because fewer males are conceived or because fewer male embryos survive (e.g., Hansen, Mǿller, and Olsen 1999). In a provocative study, Mathews, Johnson, and Neil (2008) find that poor nutrition around the time of conception results in fewer male births and suggest that breakfast skipping could explain their findings. 3 Almond and Mazumder (2011) also find that maternal fasting around the time of conception sharply lowers the share of male births.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 65%

“…Provocative studies by Mathews, Johnson, and Neil (2008) and Almond and Mazumder (2011) highlight the potential role of intermittent fasting and suggest the usefulness of exploring additional sources of variation in fasting or meal skipping. The study by Mathews, Johnson, and Neil (2008) is purely observational, and it would therefore be helpful to replicate their findings using a research design that may more plausibly utilize exogenous variation in breakfast skipping. Second, their sample only utilized 740 women.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Mathews, Johnson, and Neil (2008) find that moving from the top to the bottom tercile in nutrition around the time of conception (possibly as a result of breakfast skipping) reduces the probability of male birth by 11 percentage points. We have also implemented several robustness checks.…”

Section: B Mazumder and Z Seeskinmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Breakfast Skipping, Extreme Commutes, and the Sex Composition at Birth

Mazumder

Seeskin

2015

Biodemography and Social Biology

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A growing body of literature has shown that environmental exposures in the period around conception can affect the sex ratio at birth through selective attrition that favors the survival of female conceptuses. Glucose availability is considered a key indicator of the fetal environment, and its absence as a result of meal skipping may inhibit male survival. We hypothesize that breakfast skipping during pregnancy may lead to a reduction in the fraction of male births. Using time use data from the United States we show that women with commute times of 90 minutes or longer are 20 percentage points more likely to skip breakfast. Using U.S. census data we show that women with commute times of 90 minutes or longer are 1.2 percentage points less likely to have a male child under the age of 2. Under some assumptions, this implies that routinely skipping breakfast around the time of conception leads to a 6 percentage point reduction in the probability of a male child. Skipping breakfast during pregnancy may therefore constitute a poor environment for fetal health more generally. IntroductionBreakfast skipping is a common and growing phenomenon among American women. Approximately 40 percent of women of childbearing age are attempting to lose weight (Cohen and Kim 2009), and rates of breakfast skipping have grown steadily over time, especially for adolescent women (Haines, Guilkey, and Popkin 1996;Siega-Riz, Popkin, and Carson 1998). Holtzman (2010) finds that 75 percent of women aged 18 to 26 skip breakfast at least one day a week, 58 percent skip breakfast at least four days a week, and 29 percent skip breakfast every day. Using detailed time use data we find that on a given day, 51 percent of employed women between the ages of 15 and 45 report not eating between the hours of 5 a.m. and 10 a.m. 1 Even among pregnant women, 24 percent report skipping meals (Siega-Riz et al. 2001).Given the vast and growing literature documenting the profound and lasting effects of the prenatal environment on long-term health and socioeconomic success (e.g., Almond and Currie 2011), one might be concerned that the rising incidence of breakfast skipping among women of childbearing age might have important intergenerational ramifications. Pregnant women who extend the overnight fast by skipping breakfast experience a sharp drop in glucose levels and other associated biochemical changes referred to as "accelerated Address correspondence to Bhashkar Mazumder, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, 230 S. La Salle Street, Chicago, IL 60604, USA. E-mail: bhash.mazumder@gmail.com 1 This is based on the Eating and Health module subsample of the data, which includes all primary and secondary activities.Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www. tandfonline.com/hsbi. 188 B. Mazumder and Z. Seeskinstarvation" (Metzger et al. 1982). Declines in glucose levels as a result of overnight fasts of 10 to 12 hours in length have been observed in women as early as the sixth to tenth weeks of pregnancy (Mills et al. 1998)....

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 65%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Breakfast Skipping, Extreme Commutes, and the Sex Composition at Birth

Mazumder

Seeskin

2015

Biodemography and Social Biology

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“…Latitude values, namely rounded latitude for the centroid or centre point of a country expressed in degrees and minutes, for nations were obtained from the CIA World Factbook (CIA, 2011) and numerical values were used irrespective of direction. Testing the relation of high resource availability and male-biased sex ratios frequently found in many animals, Mathews et al (2008) studied a large cohort of British Women and found that 56% of women in the highest third of preconception energy intake bore boys, compared with 45% in the lowest third. Disability-adjusted life years (DALY) lost due to protein energy malnutrition, iodine deficiency, vitamin A deficiency, and iron deficiency were used as an independent measure of nutrition stress.…”

Section: Independent Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do differences in Toxoplasma prevalence influence global variation in secondary sex ratio? Preliminary ecological regression study

2016

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Sex of the fetus is genetically determined such that an equal number of sons and daughters are born in large populations. However, the ratio of female to male births across human populations varies significantly. Many factors have been implicated in this. The theory that natural selection should favour female offspring under suboptimal environmental conditions implies that pathogens may affect secondary sex ratio (ratio of male to female births). Using regression models containing 13 potential confounding factors, we have found that variation of the secondary sex ratio can be predicted by seroprevalence of Toxoplasma across 94 populations distributed across African, American, Asian and European continents. Toxoplasma seroprevalence was the third strongest predictor of secondary sex ratio, β = −0·097, P < 0·01, after son preference, β = 0·261, P < 0·05, and fertility, β = −0·145, P < 0·001. Our preliminary results suggest that Toxoplasma gondii infection could be one of the most important environmental factors influencing the global variation of offspring sex ratio in humans. The effect of latent toxoplasmosis on public health could be much more serious than it is usually supposed to be.

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“…It is possible that other factors besides ambient temperature are influencing variation in the proportion of males born in Australia and New Zealand. For example, maternal nutritional status and, in particular, preconception energy intake was positively associated with a greater proportion of male births in a UK study (Mathews et al 2008). Further, in Helle et al's (2009) study where ambient temperature was positively associated with the SSR, periods of famine showed a negative association.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%