| Title: | "Common HLA alleles associated with health, but not with facial attractiveness" |
| Author(s): | Coetzee V; Barrett L; Greeff JM; Henzi SP; Perrett DI; Wadee AA; |
| Address: | "Department of Genetics, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa. vcoetzee@tuks.co.za" |
| DOI: | 10.1371/journal.pone.0000640 |
| ISSN/ISBN: | 1932-6203 (Electronic) 1932-6203 (Linking) |
| Abstract: | "Three adaptive hypotheses have been proposed to explain the link between the human leucocyte antigen (hla) genes, health measures and facial attractiveness: inbreeding avoidance, heterozygote advantage and frequency-dependent selection. This paper reports findings that support a new hypothesis relating HLA to health. We suggest a new method to quantify the level of heterozygosity. HLA heterozygosity did not significantly predict health measures in women, but allele frequency did. Women with more common HLA alleles reported fewer cold and flu bouts per year, fewer illnesses in the previous year and rated themselves healthier than women with rare alleles. To our knowledge, this is the first study to show a positive correlation between HLA allele frequency and general health measures. We propose that certain common HLA alleles confer resistance to prevalent pathogens. Nevertheless, neither HLA heterozygosity nor allele frequency significantly predicted how healthy or attractive men rated the female volunteers. Three non-mutually exclusive explanations are put forward to explain this finding" |
| Keywords: | "Alleles Beauty Epistasis, Genetic *Face Female Gene Frequency HLA Antigens/*genetics *Health Status Heterozygote Humans Inbreeding Male Patient Selection Sex Attractants/*genetics Sex Characteristics;" |
| Notes: | "MedlineCoetzee, Vinet Barrett, Louise Greeff, Jaco M Henzi, S Peter Perrett, David I Wadee, Ahmed A eng Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't 2007/07/27 PLoS One. 2007 Jul 25; 2(7):e640. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0000640" |
