| It is said that if man is from mars, woman is jupiter. To add on to the untold number of distinguishing factors, the scientist have proved that the illness one suffers from also differs as per sex of the human brain. |
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Scientists say they have proof that the sex of the brain makes men and women more prone to different diseases. Doctors know that women are more likely than men to have depression, anxiety or an eating disorder, while men are at higher risk of Parkin-sons disease. Post-mortem and brain imaging studies show that male and female brains are physically different. Now scientists say they can to link the two together and suggest future disease cures may be "gender-specific". The sex of a brain is decided in the mothers womb and depends, among other factors, on hormone levels. Higher levels of testosterone makes a male brain and oestrogen a female one.
Professor Dick Swaab from The Netherlands Institute for Brain Research in Amsterdam, said the proof for this comes from studies of transsexuals-people who know often from a very early age, that they are born in the wrong gender body. "The theory is that the sex difference in the sex organs develops early in pregnancy-in the first few months while in utero- while sexual differentiation of the brain occurs later in the second half of pregnancy and postnatally".
That would mean certain factors could interfere with the sexual differentiation of the sex organs and brain in an independent way because there is a time lapse between the two. "If that was true you would expect to see female structures in male brains. That is indeed what people have found-a reversed sex difference in the brain of transsexuals."
He said that because men and womens brains are different "we should be looking at diseases as male and female". "There is a different sex ratio for neurological and psychiatric diseases. In depression, it is clear that sex hormones are a directly interfering with stress axis in the brain," he said.
- Women tend to be better at empathising-guessing others em-otions and responding accordingly
- Men are generally better at systemising-investigating how a system works
"We have shown that sensitive proteins (receptors) for sex hormones are present in the cells that form the stress axis. In women there are more oestrogen receptors and in men more androgen receptors present. "That results in higher prevalence of depression in women compared to men because the stress axis is more sensitive. The oestrogens are directly affecting the production of the stress peptides. So for the same amount of stress in the environment, women are more prone to develop depression than men".
Others have shown that hormone levels could play a part in multiple sclerosis. Dr Carlo Pozzilli and colleagues at the University La Sapienza in Italy found that women with MS had lower levels of testosterone throughout their monthly cycle compared to women who did not have MS.
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