Women with Neandertal Gene Variant are More Fertile, Have Fewer Miscarriages
takyon writes:
Women with Neandertal gene give birth to more children
One in three women in Europe inherited the receptor for progesterone from Neandertals - a gene variant associated with increased fertility, fewer bleedings during early pregnancy and fewer miscarriages. This is according to a study published in Molecular Biology and Evolution by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany and Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.
[...] Progesterone is a hormone, which plays an important role in the menstrual cycle and in pregnancy. Analyses of biobank data from more than 450,000 participants - among them 244,000 women - show that almost one in three women in Europe have inherited the progesterone receptor from Neandertals. 29 percent carry one copy of the Neandertal receptor and three percent have two copies.
"The proportion of women who inherited this gene is about ten times greater than for most Neandertal gene variants," says Hugo Zeberg. "These findings suggest that the Neandertal variant of the receptor has a favourable effect on fertility."
Journal Reference:
Hugo Zeberg, Janet Kelso, Svante Paabo. Neandertal Progesterone Receptor [open], Molecular Biology and Evolution (DOI: 10.1093/molbev/msaa119)
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