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I had the idea the other day that perhaps increasing allergy prevalence is a side effect of women taking birth control. Taking birth control causes women to pre
by ericb 17y ago
I had the idea the other day that perhaps increasing allergy prevalence is a side effect of women taking birth control. Taking birth control causes women to prefer mates with a major histocompatibility complex that is similar to their own, as opposed to different. I'm wondering if allergies are the result of violating nature's usual preference in this regard.
I'm just a layman, so feel free to correct or scoff at the plausability of my pet theory.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=birth-control-pills-affect-womens-taste http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=birth-contr...
- biohacker42 17y agoWell a more diverse histocompatibility complex is supposed to make for a stronger immune system and an allergy is described as an immune overreaction... but yeah I also have no idea what I'm talking about.
- zngtk4 17y agoFor the record, not all scientists accept the research regarding birth control and mate preference as sound science. There's not even good evidence that humans can detect (even unconsciously) the MHC genotypes of another person (most of the papers don't show a statistically significant effect), which the referenced paper takes as one if its premises. In addition, in the paper referred to in the article, there isn't a lot of difference between those on the pill and off (the error bars tended to overlap): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18700206?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18700206?ordinalpos=1&... It was also not a random or blind trial: "allocation to the pill/control group was entirely the decision of the volunteers, not the experiments."