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March 4, 2011
10:07 AM
771 views

Mate magnet madness: When the range of possible explanations exceeds your own hypothesis

by Kate Clancy in Context & Variation

A rebuttal of a Tierney column on the evolutionary psychology of relationship maintenance.... Read more »

Brockelman, W., Reichard, U., Treesucon, U., & Raemaekers, J. (1998) Dispersal, pair formation and social structure in gibbons ( Hylobates lar ). Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 42(5), 329-339. DOI: 10.1007/s002650050445

MANER, J., GAILLIOT, M., & MILLER, S. (2009) The implicit cognition of relationship maintenance: Inattention to attractive alternatives. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(1), 174-179. DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2008.08.002

Miller, S, & Maner, J. (2010) Evolution and relationship maintenance: Fertility cues lead committed men to devalue relationship alternatives. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1081-1084. info:/

Murdock, G., & White, D. (1969) Standard Cross-Cultural Sample. Ethnology, 8(4), 329. DOI: 10.2307/3772907

July 20, 2009
03:51 PM
688 views

What does this anthropologist think about hormonal birth control? Part IV

by Kate Clancy in Laboratory for Evolutionary Endocrinology

This is part IV of V of my series on hormonal contraception. Please also see parts I, II, and III.Behavior and cognitionIn western culture, media, commercials, and magazines, the menstrual cycle is almost universally considered to be negative. Pharmaceutical companies advertise pills to improve mood, from SaraFem (this was another name for Prozac, targeted just to women), to Midol, to the new hormonal contraceptive Yaz (which has recently gotten in trouble for the way they promoted their mood improvement, if you look at their new ads). Different tampons and pads are advertised to reduce discomfort, improve sleep, reduce smell or the possibility of being ‘discovered.’That’s not to say there aren’t some at least moderately positive portrayals of menses: the coming-of-age feeling that comes with the first period, the relief that comes from getting a late period after a pregnancy scare. And if you can think of other positive portrayals, please do share them in the comments. That said, it’s no surprise that most people who study periods study it from a negative perspective. They tend to look for negative mood disturbances, for incidences of PMS, for variations in PMS or PMDD symptomology. Most of the studies I’ve read over the years have negative mood or stress questionnaires (like the Moos Menstrual Distress Questionnaire); they often preempt women to confirm symptoms by providing them with a list. Very few of them attempt to discover variation in positive emotions through the menstrual cycle.Notable examples to this are Emily Martin’s book The Woman in the Body (1980) and a smattering of articles. In 1994, Walker was interested in dispelling the notion that women’s experiences of their menstrual cycle had little cycle-to-cycle variation, and that these experiences were negative. What she found was that most women experience significant cycle-to-cycle variation, which she says means that hormones explain only a small amount of the variation in mood (Walker 1994). Walker also found more positive mood at midcycle and more negative mood premenstrually and menstrually. Brown et al (2008) also found increased positive well-being at midcycle. There is other evidence that menstrual cycle phase does not strongly predict mood: Mansfield et al (1989) found that women’s negative mood and arousal were more strongly predicted by the day of the week than menstrual cycle phase – negative mood and arousal decreased on weekends. I don’t know that I have enough information to agree or disagree with Walker’s conclusion that hormones explain a very small portion of mood, but I do think that hormones are important, and cultural conditioning is important. Which one is more important may not be as relevant to this discussion as just noticing that we need to pay attention to both. How do reproductive hormones impact behavior and cognition, if they do at all? Unfortunately, there just isn’t enough evidence for me to be comfortable with sharing much of an answer. There are potential mechanisms aplenty, particularly regarding estrogens. Shively and Bethea (2004) review monkey literature and, while they find consistent results regarding estrogen-cognition-mood relationships, they temper this finding because the sample sizes of most of the studies reviewed were quite small. Further, most of the studies involve inducing menopause, which means they are comparing monkeys essentially with and without estrogen, rather than measuring cognitive differences in monkeys with naturally occurring variation; this would be far more useful if we are at all interested in premenopausal women.The next question to ask is, what do we know of any impacts oral contraceptives may have on behavior or cognition? And again, the answer isn’t too satisfying. Brown et al (2008) found women on hormonal contraception reported more negative well-being than non-contracepting women. Walker (1994) found that the cycle-to-cycle variability she found in non-contracepting women was significantly reduced in contracepting women. Bancroft and Sartorius (1990) found significant variation in improvement or deterioration of libido on oral contraceptives: libido seemed to depend on which type of hormonal contraception, but results were also complicated by the fact that they found women who had negative experiences of hormonal contraception tended to stop using them, creating a data set that appeared more satisfied with their prescriptions than perhaps was the case. Joffe et al (2003) found that women with a history of depression were more likely to experience complications with contraceptives, and those with the potential to get early-onset premenstrual mood disturbance or dysmenorrhea saw an improvement. Finally, women who use both a barrier method and hormonal contraception report much higher sexual satisfaction than condom-only or hormone-only users (and in fact, hormone-only users had the lowest satisfaction) (Higgins et al. 2008).Where does this put us? Well, the relationships between hormones and mood and cognition are very complicated, and hormones only constitute part of the process. Culture, personality, heck, even day of the week is important. That said, the few results we have on oral contraceptives do seem to indicate that they have an impact on mood – some of this may be physiological, but some, such as the improvement in sexual satisfaction by dual users in the Higgins et al (2008), are more likely related to the calm afforded by feeling doubly protected from pregnancy rather than an effect of the estrogens or progestins. I would like to see further study on natural cycles and contracepting cycles on all sorts of behavioral and cognitive factors, and should oral contraceptives prove to negatively impact any of them, this should be a labeled side effect.My final part of the series will briefly discuss my own opinion on hormonal contraceptives, as well as information on other contraception options available.ReferencesBancroft J, & Sartorius N (1990). The effects of oral contraceptives on well-being and sexuality Oxford Reviews of Reproductive Biology, 12, 57-92 DOI: 2075004Brown, S., Morrison, L., Larkspur, L., Marsh, A., & Nicolaisen, N. (2008). Well-Being, Sleep, Exercise Patterns, and the Menstrual Cycle: A Comparison of Natural Hormones, Oral Contraceptives and Depo-Provera Women & Health, 47 (1), 105-121 DOI: 10.1300/J013v47n01_06Higgins, J., Hoffman, S., Graham, C., & Sanders, S. (2008). Relationships between condoms, hormonal methods, and sexual pleasure and satisfaction: an exploratory analysis from the Women's Well-Being and Sexuality Study Sexual Health, 5 (4) DOI: 10.1071/SH08021... Read more »

Bancroft J, & Sartorius N. (1990) The effects of oral contraceptives on well-being and sexuality. Oxford Reviews of Reproductive Biology, 57-92. DOI: 2075004

Brown, S., Morrison, L., Larkspur, L., Marsh, A., & Nicolaisen, N. (2008) Well-Being, Sleep, Exercise Patterns, and the Menstrual Cycle: A Comparison of Natural Hormones, Oral Contraceptives and Depo-Provera. Women , 47(1), 105-121. DOI: 10.1300/J013v47n01_06

Higgins, J., Hoffman, S., Graham, C., & Sanders, S. (2008) Relationships between condoms, hormonal methods, and sexual pleasure and satisfaction: an exploratory analysis from the Women's Well-Being and Sexuality Study. Sexual Health, 5(4), 321. DOI: 10.1071/SH08021

Joffe, H., Cohen, L., & Harlow, B. (2003) Impact of oral contraceptive pill use on premenstrual mood: Predictors of improvement and deterioration. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 189(6), 1523-1530. DOI: 10.1016/S0002-9378(03)00927-X

Mansfield PK, Hood KE, & Henderson J. (1989) Women and their husbands: mood and arousal fluctuations across the menstrual cycle and days of the week. Psychosomatic Medicine, 51(1), 66-80. DOI: 2928462

Shively, C, & Bethea C. (2004) Cognition, mood disorders, and sex hormones. ILAR J, 45(2), 189-199. DOI: 15111738

Walker, A. (1994) Mood and well-being in consecutive menstrual cycles. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 18(2), 271-290.

May 17, 2011
06:04 PM
661 views

Do girls steal some of their mother’s beauty? Sex bias in parental investment

by Kate Clancy in Context & Variation

An examination of a recent paper on maternal breast size after pregnancy, and the Trivers-Willard hypothesis.... Read more »

Dimitrakakis C, Jones RA, Liu A, & Bondy CA. (2004) Breast cancer incidence in postmenopausal women using testosterone in addition to usual hormone therapy. Menopause (New York, N.Y.), 11(5), 531-5. PMID: 15356405

Galbarczyk A. (2011) Unexpected changes in maternal breast size during pregnancy in relation to infant sex: An evolutionary interpretation. American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council. PMID: 21544894

Helle, S. (2002) Sons Reduced Maternal Longevity in Preindustrial Humans. Science, 296(5570), 1085-1085. DOI: 10.1126/science.1070106

Hinde K. (2009) Richer milk for sons but more milk for daughters: Sex-biased investment during lactation varies with maternal life history in rhesus macaques. American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council, 21(4), 512-9. PMID: 19384860

Hrdy, S. (1990) Sex bias in nature and in history: A late 1980s reexamination of the “biological origins” argument. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 33(S11), 25-37. DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.1330330504

Jasienska G, Nenko I, & Jasienski M. (2006) Daughters increase longevity of fathers, but daughters and sons equally reduce longevity of mothers. American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council, 18(3), 422-5. PMID: 16634019

Poretsky L, Seto-Young D, Shrestha A, Dhillon S, Mirjany M, Liu HC, Yih MC, & Rosenwaks Z. (2001) Phosphatidyl-inositol-3 kinase-independent insulin action pathway(s) in the human ovary. The Journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism, 86(7), 3115-9. PMID: 11443175

April 6, 2011
12:00 PM
659 views

If I objectify you, will it make you feel bad enough to objectify yourself? On shopping, sexiness and hormones.

by Kate Clancy in Context & Variation

This post critiques recent work on "sexy" shopping behavior during high and low fertility periods in the menstrual cycle.... Read more »

Campbell, A. (2004) Female competition: Causes, constraints, content, and contexts. Journal of Sex Research, 41(1), 16-26. DOI: 10.1080/00224490409552210

Durante, KM, Griskevicius, V, Hill, SE, Perilloux, C, & Li, NP. (2011) Ovulation, female competition, and product choice: hormonal influences on consumer behavior. Journal of Consumer Research, 37(6), 921-934. info:/

Fehring, R., Schneider, M., & Raviele, K. (2006) Variability in the Phases of the Menstrual Cycle. Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic, Neonatal Nursing, 35(3), 376-384. DOI: 10.1111/j.1552-6909.2006.00051.x

Lenton EA, Landgren BM, Sexton L, & Harper R. (1984) Normal variation in the length of the follicular phase of the menstrual cycle: effect of chronological age. British journal of obstetrics and gynaecology, 91(7), 681-4. PMID: 6743609

Moffitt, L., & Szymanski, D. (2010) Experiencing Sexually Objectifying Environments: A Qualitative Study. The Counseling Psychologist, 39(1), 67-106. DOI: 10.1177/0011000010364551

Smuts, B. (1995) The evolutionary origins of patriarchy. Human Nature, 6(1), 1-32. DOI: 10.1007/BF02734133

Streeter, S. (2003) Waist–hip ratio and attractiveness New evidence and a critique of “a critical test”. Evolution and Human Behavior, 24(2), 88-98. DOI: 10.1016/S1090-5138(02)00121-6

February 21, 2011
12:51 AM
647 views

Tag-teaming research blogging: Me and Sci do it up, PMDD-style

by Kate Clancy in Context & Variation

When I was in college, my favorite hangout was the basement of the Harvard Book Store, where they had the used books and cheap remainders (they were also across the street from my freshman dorm, Wigglesworth, and yes, that is a most excellent name). I worked my way through several sci-fi and fantasy series, and got nearly all my Women’s Studies books, because of that one lovely room.One night in my freshman year I was browsing the philosophy section with a new boyfriend, a person with whom I often felt inferior and less-educated. I saw an author name on the spine of an old hardcover and, hoping to impress the boyfriend, pointed it out. “Hobbes Machiavelli, I’ve read stuff by him,” I said. I arched my eyebrows with what I hoped was an air of intelligence.The boyfriend, and a nearby witness, both turned towards me. “Hobbes and Machiavelli are two different people,” he said slowly.As a blush crept up my face, I realized several things: the excerpt of “The Prince” I had barely skimmed in high school was by Niccolo Machiavelli, Hobbes was a totally different dude, and my boyfriend thought I was a posturing idiot.It’s a good idea to know what you’re talking about before opening your mouth.* * *These days, if I don’t know the answer to something, I don’t try to fake it. Recently, a Twitter follower suggested I write on this New Scientist story and the empirical article upon which it was reporting on brain activity, hormones and Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder. As I am not an expert on issues of the brain, rather than try to be I enlisted brilliant neuroscientist Scicurious to do tag-team blog posts where we could each cover the material where we had expertise. I had a few thoughts about the way the New Scientist article author framed the study, and about the hormone analyses. So I’ll talk about that, and Sci will cover BRAINZ in this post.What is this study about?Rapkin et al (2011) seek to understand why a minority of women experience Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD), a suite of premenstrual behaviors that include severe and debilitating irritability, depression and anxiety. They used PET scans to look at brain stuff (cue Scicurious) and also looked at hormone concentrations to see if the reproductive hormones that decline in the premenstrual phase had anything to do with it. They found no difference in hormone concentrations between control and PMDD women, but did find variation in cerebellar activity by menstrual phase. You need to read Scicurious's take on this, because she provides important background and context to the study of the cerebellum for mood.The New Scientist piece makes a lot of the potential effect of progesterone on GABA receptors in the brain, but as far as I can tell the article itself does not measure GABA receptors. Progesterone, allopregnanolone and GABA are all interrelated and important chemicals when it comes to mood (Concas et al 1998), but like I said, since the study didn’t actually look at GABA, I’m not going there. Sci has also made some important points about this issue, and on what the study authors found (which is admittedly cool) with what they discuss around GABA (which might be a wee bit of a stretch).Nits to pick with New ScientistZukerman, the author of the New Scientist piece, begins her piece, entitled “Why women get anxious at ‘that time of the month’” with this:“Is it that time of the month? These are the words no man should ever utter. How about this for a diplomatic alternative: "Are your GABA receptors playing up?"You may be spot on. It seems that these brain cells are to blame for some women's monthly mood swings.Many women feel a little irritable before menstruating, but up to 8 per cent suffer extreme symptoms, including anxiety, depression and fatigue.”There are a few things that trouble me about this. First, without citing any actual incidence of this symptom, the author claims that many women suffer from irritability before their period. This just perpetuates the idea that irritability is a common premenstrual trait, when the premenstrual phase is an incredibly variable period. This is despite the fact that at most only eight percent of women actually get these symptoms to the point that they are debilitating (the two studies the study authors cite give a 5% and 8% incidence, so 8% may be high).From a public health or science research perspective, eight percent of reproductively aged women is a pretty significant quantity. I absolutely want more research to be done on PMDD and, full disclosure, I’m running some pilot studies to work on it in the future myself. However, these results don’t necessarily translate to women who may just get a little irritable or experience other mild behavioral symptoms before their period.And that is why both the title and the “Is it that time of the month” joke at the start of the story were misleading. Besides its obvious sexism, where any female behavior that deviates from the pleasing and passive risks eliciting that question, the link here in the mind of a popular reader is that women’s behavior is governed by hormone and brain interactions more generally than the paper actually implies.So, to reiterate: PMDD impacts maybe eight percent of reproductively aged women (notice that I keep specifically referencing “reproductively-aged women,” which further shrinks the pool of women down to those between menarche and menopause). This is nothing to sneeze at. But this isn’t everyone.HormonesIn order to see if there were differences in hormone concentrations between normal and PMDD women, Rapkin et al (2011) took blood on the days of the PET scans: this translated into one follicular phase (first half of the cycle, between menses and ovulation) and one late luteal phase collection (the week or so before the next menses). They found no difference in the mean concentrations of estradiol and progesterone between the two groups, at either time period.Table 1 from Rapkin et al (2011). None of these differences between groups are significant according to the authors, but they didn't report p-values anywhere I could find.There are several problems with this. First, the sample size is tiny. I have certainly been known to run analyses with fewer subjects, but the way I and other folks who do hormone work get around this is to sample each individual many more times. When collecting hormone information on reproductively-aged women, for instance, you want to collect a minimum of one menstrual cycle’s worth of data… every single day.More power!My advisor raised me right, and so I did a power analysis of the data the study authors provided. A power analysis is a way to determine the statistical power of a test. You can do it beforehand to determine an appropriate sample size for your experiment, or afterwards if you didn’t find something statistically significant and don’t know if your analysis was effective. When there are small but important differences between two groups, but the sample size is also small, your statistical test can be insignificant and thus miss that important difference.Let’s take the hormone and time period that should be the most meaningful: progesterone in the late luteal phase. PMDD women had 5.50 ± 5.27 ng/mL, and control women had 6.76 ± 7.53 ng/mL. If we say that the smallest difference between these two groups that would be interesting is around 6 ng/mL (just splitting the difference between the two standard deviations, but this is pretty generous), then according to my calculations this test only has a power of about 60%. Therefore, 40% of the time a test with a sample size this small wouldn’t catch a potentially important difference between the groups. To put it into more perspective, the standard is to have a power of at least 80%.What’s blood got to do with it?... Read more »

Bloch M, Schmidt PJ, Su TP, Tobin MB, & Rubinow DR. (1998) Pituitary-adrenal hormones and testosterone across the menstrual cycle in women with premenstrual syndrome and controls. Biological psychiatry, 43(12), 897-903. PMID: 9627744

Concas A, Mostallino MC, Porcu P, Follesa P, Barbaccia ML, Trabucchi M, Purdy RH, Grisenti P, & Biggio G. (1998) Role of brain allopregnanolone in the plasticity of gamma-aminobutyric acid type A receptor in rat brain during pregnancy and after delivery. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95(22), 13284-9. PMID: 9789080

Rapkin AJ, Berman SM, Mandelkern MA, Silverman DH, Morgan M, & London ED. (2011) Neuroimaging evidence of cerebellar involvement in premenstrual dysphoric disorder. Biological psychiatry, 69(4), 374-80. PMID: 21092938

Rubinow DR, Hoban MC, Grover GN, Galloway DS, Roy-Byrne P, Andersen R, & Merriam GR. (1988) Changes in plasma hormones across the menstrual cycle in patients with menstrually related mood disorder and in control subjects. American journal of obstetrics and gynecology, 158(1), 5-11. PMID: 2962499

July 17, 2009
08:15 AM
629 views

What does this anthropologist think about hormonal birth control? Part III

by Kate Clancy in Laboratory for Evolutionary Endocrinology

In parts I and II of this series, I discussed the basic no-nos around contraception, the reason some advocate its continuous use, and what constitutes a normal menstrual cycle. Today, I'll explain a bit about population variation in reproductive function, and how it may relate to the conversation.Population variationBoth the efficacy of hormonal contraception and its non-contraceptive benefits are reduced if women do not take their prescriptions properly, and there are many reasons women do this: poor education regarding what constitutes ‘perfect use,’ ambivalence about their choice of contraception, or dissatisfaction regarding side effects. Baerwald and colleagues found different degrees of suppressed ovulation depending on when contraceptives were started; if hormonal contraception was initiated at or before ovarian follicles had reached 10mm, suppression occurred in all cases, but became increasingly less likely as follicles increased in size (Baerwald et al. 2006). One of the methods of initiating hormonal contraceptives involves the idea of a ‘Sunday Start’ where women start taking the medication the first Sunday after their last menses, rather than on the first day of menses. The reasoning is that it is easier to keep track of pills (or patches or rings) when one starts each week on a Sunday rather than on whatever day menses happens to begin. Unfortunately, significant follicular growth can occur between menses and the start of the contraception, depending on the individual and the day menses began. This can mean a woman can think she is protected from pregnancy for that cycle, but has ovulated and thus at a much greater risk for unwanted pregnancy. If a woman stops and starts – due to difficulties obtaining her prescription, traveling, or dissatisfaction with the brand of contraceptive she chooses – she may have many ovulatory cycles, or at the least many cycles where her follicles are growing and regressing. My worry is that this could lead to polycystic ovaries or even mutations during tissue remodeling that could lead to ovarian cancer (this is a hypothesis, not an observation or statement of empirical evidence).Other reasons a woman may not stay on hormonal contraception and thus may not have ‘perfect use’ is that her normal range of variation in endogenous hormones is different from the American norm. Women from developing countries tend to have lower circulating levels of reproductive hormones (for examples directly related to contraception, see Bentley 1996; Ellison 1990; Vitzthum et al. 2004); this means their responsiveness to the exogenous hormones of contraceptives will be different, just like with overweight American women but at the other end of the spectrum. Bentley (1996) reports significant interpopulation variation in pharmacokinetic properties of hormonal contraceptives; this means that different women have different physiological responses to hormones, even when taking the same dose. She also reviewed the literature regarding interpopulation variation in side effects experienced by women on hormonal contraception (Bentley 1996). Vitzthum and colleagues (2001) report shorter duration of menses for samples of Bolivian versus Chicago women, and significantly lower endogenous hormone concentrations in Bolivian versus Chicago women (Vitzthum et al. 2004). The penultimate paragraph of the 2004 article is the most telling:“The present study also reaffirms the conclusion of others that hormonal contraceptive dosages designed for U.S. women and other industrialized countries may be excessively high for women in developing countries, resulting in severe side-effects leading to discontinuation and, potentially, unplanned pregnancy. We have often heard Bolivian women and health workers express concern about negative experiences with hormonal contraceptives. Contrary to arguments that noncompliance is more a matter of education than biology, these data succinctly support the reports of these women that negative sequelae of hormonal contraceptives are more than an imagined problem.”Thus we have Bentley’s review of variation in effects on contraception, several decades of literature on population variation in ovarian function via ecology, and anecdotal evidence from the mouths of women from developing countries; put together, they tell a story about a broad spectrum of women who may respond differently to hormonal contraceptives. On Monday I'll cover whether hormonal contraceptives create any behavior or cognition changes in those who take them.ReferencesBaerwald A, Olatunbosun O, & Pierson R (2006). Effects of oral contraceptives administered at defined stages of ovarian follicular development Fertility and Sterility, 86 (1), 27-35Bentley GR. 1996. Evidence for interpopulation variation in normal ovarian function and consequences for hormonal contraception. In: Rosetta LaM-T, C.G.N., editor. Variability in human fertility. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. p 46-65.Ellison PT (1990). Human ovarian function and reproductive ecology: new hypotheses American Anthropologist, 94 (2), 933-952Vitzthum VJ, Spielvogel H, Caceres E, & Miller A (2001). Vaginal bleeding patterns among rural highland Bolivian women: relationship to fecundity and fetal loss Contraception, 64, 319-325Vitzthum VJ, Spielvogel H, & Thornburg J (2004). Interpopulational differences in progesterone levels during conception and implantation in humans Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 101 (6), 1443-1448This post was written by Kathryn Clancy for the Laboratory for Evolutionary Endocrinology Blog. Except as noted, it is (C)Kathryn Clancy and licensed under a Creative Commons License. The opinions on this blog are the opinions of the blog author only, not the author's employer or colleagues.... Read more »

Baerwald A, Olatunbosun O, & Pierson R. (2006) Effects of oral contraceptives administered at defined stages of ovarian follicular development. Fertility and Sterility, 86(1), 27-35.

Ellison PT. (1990) Human ovarian function and reproductive ecology: new hypotheses. American Anthropologist, 94(2), 933-952.

Vitzthum VJ, Spielvogel H, Caceres E, & Miller A. (2001) Vaginal bleeding patterns among rural highland Bolivian women: relationship to fecundity and fetal loss. Contraception, 319-325.

Vitzthum VJ, Spielvogel H, & Thornburg J. (2004) Interpopulational differences in progesterone levels during conception and implantation in humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 101(6), 1443-1448.

July 15, 2009
01:24 PM
627 views

What does this anthropologist think about hormonal contraception? Part I

by Kate Clancy in Laboratory for Evolutionary Endocrinology

The first of a multi-part series on the benefits and concerns around hormonal contraception.... Read more »

Brunner Huber LR, & Hogue CJ. (2005) The association between body weight, unintended pregnancy resulting in a livebirth, and contraception at the time of conception. Maternal and Child Health Journal, 9(4), 413-420.

Burkman RT, Fisher AC, Wan GJ, Barnowski CE, & LaGuardia KD. (2009) Association between efficacy and body weight or body mass index for two low-dose oral contraceptives. Contraception, 79(6), 424-427.

July 20, 2009
02:52 PM
622 views

What does this anthropologist think about hormonal contraception? Part IV

by Kate Clancy in Laboratory for Evolutionary Endocrinology

Fourth of a five-part series on hormonal contraception, from an anthropological standpoint. This part of the series is on behavior and cognitive changes associated with hormones.... Read more »

Bancroft J, & Sartorius N. (1990) The effects of oral contraceptives on well-being and sexuality. Oxford Reviews of Reproductive Biology, 57-92. DOI: 2075004

Brown, S., Morrison, L., Larkspur, L., Marsh, A., & Nicolaisen, N. (2008) Well-Being, Sleep, Exercise Patterns, and the Menstrual Cycle: A Comparison of Natural Hormones, Oral Contraceptives and Depo-Provera. Women , 47(1), 105-121. DOI: 10.1300/J013v47n01_06

Higgins, J., Hoffman, S., Graham, C., & Sanders, S. (2008) Relationships between condoms, hormonal methods, and sexual pleasure and satisfaction: an exploratory analysis from the Women's Well-Being and Sexuality Study. Sexual Health, 5(4), 321. DOI: 10.1071/SH08021

Joffe, H., Cohen, L., & Harlow, B. (2003) Impact of oral contraceptive pill use on premenstrual mood: Predictors of improvement and deterioration. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 189(6), 1523-1530. DOI: 10.1016/S0002-9378(03)00927-X

Mansfield PK, Hood KE, & Henderson J. (1989) Women and their husbands: mood and arousal fluctuations across the menstrual cycle and days of the week. Psychosomatic Medicine, 51(1), 66-80. DOI: 2928462

Shively, C, & Bethea C. (2004) Cognition, mood disorders, and sex hormones. ILAR J, 45(2), 189-199. DOI: 15111738

Walker, A. (1994) Mood and well-being in consecutive menstrual cycles. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 18(2), 271-290.

April 20, 2011
11:13 AM
612 views

AAPA symposium on Evolution through the Life Course: Why we shouldn't prescribe hormonal contraception to twelve year olds

by Kate Clancy in Context & Variation

A blog version of a talk I gave at an invited symposium at this year's AAPAs, plus some additional thoughts and broader context.... Read more »

Bentley GR. (1994) Ranging hormones: do hormonal contraceptives ignore human biological variation and evolution?. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 201-3. PMID: 8154705

Clark, L. (2004) Menstrual irregularity from hormonal contraception triggers significant reproductive health fears in adolescent girls. Journal of Adolescent Health, 34(2), 123-124. DOI: 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2003.11.091

Clark, L. (2001) Will the Pill Make Me Sterile? Addressing Reproductive Health Concerns and Strategies to Improve Adherence to Hormonal Contraceptive Regimens in Adolescent Girls. Journal of Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology, 14(4), 153-162. DOI: 10.1016/S1083-3188(01)00123-1

Collaborative group. (1996) Breast cancer and hormonal contraceptives: collaborative reanalysis of individual data on 53 297 women with breast cancer and 100 239 women without breast cancer from 54 epidemiological studies. The Lancet, 347(9017), 1713-1727. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(96)90806-5

Collaborative Group on Epidemiological Studies of Ovarian Cancer, Beral V, Doll R, Hermon C, Peto R, & Reeves G. (2008) Ovarian cancer and oral contraceptives: collaborative reanalysis of data from 45 epidemiological studies including 23,257 women with ovarian cancer and 87,303 controls. Lancet, 371(9609), 303-14. PMID: 18294997

Collins, N., Dunkel-Schetter, C., Lobel, M., & Scrimshaw, S. (1993) Social support in pregnancy: Psychosocial correlates of birth outcomes and postpartum depression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(6), 1243-1258. DOI: 10.1037//0022-3514.65.6.1243

D'Antona Ade O, Chelekis JA, D'Antona MF, & Siqueira AD. (2009) Contraceptive discontinuation and non-use in Santarém, Brazilian Amazon. Cadernos de saude publica / Ministerio da Saude, Fundacao Oswaldo Cruz, Escola Nacional de Saude Publica, 25(9), 2021-32. PMID: 19750389

Feldman PJ, Dunkel-Schetter C, Sandman CA, & Wadhwa PD. (2000) Maternal social support predicts birth weight and fetal growth in human pregnancy. Psychosomatic medicine, 62(5), 715-25. PMID: 11020102

Fraser IS, & Kovacs GT. (2003) The efficacy of non-contraceptive uses for hormonal contraceptives. The Medical journal of Australia, 178(12), 621-3. PMID: 12797849

Gerschultz KL, Sucato GS, Hennon TR, Murray PJ, & Gold MA. (2007) Extended cycling of combined hormonal contraceptives in adolescents: physician views and prescribing practices. The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine, 40(2), 151-7. PMID: 17259055

Gubhaju, B. (2009) Barriers to Sustained Use of Contraception in Nepal: Quality of Care, Socioeconomic Status, and Method-Related Factors. Biodemography and Social Biology, 55(1), 52-70. DOI: 10.1080/19485560903054671

Gupta, N., Corrado, S., & Goldstein, M. (2008) Hormonal Contraception for the Adolescent. Pediatrics in Review, 29(11), 386-397. DOI: 10.1542/pir.29-11-386

Hawkes, K. (2003) Grandmothers and the evolution of human longevity. American Journal of Human Biology, 15(3), 380-400. DOI: 10.1002/ajhb.10156

Kahlenborn, C., Modugno, F., Potter, D., & Severs, W. (2006) Oral Contraceptive Use as a Risk Factor for Premenopausal Breast Cancer: A Meta-analysis. Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 81(10), 1290-1302. DOI: 10.4065/81.10.1290

Kramer, K. (2005) Children's Help and the Pace of Reproduction: Cooperative Breeding in Humans. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 14(6), 224-237. DOI: 10.1002/evan.20082

Kramer KL. (2008) Early sexual maturity among Pumé foragers of Venezuela: fitness implications of teen motherhood. American journal of physical anthropology, 136(3), 338-50. PMID: 18386795

KRISHNAMOORTHY, N., SIMPSON, C., TOWNEND, J., HELMS, P., & MCLAY, J. (2008) Adolescent Females and Hormonal Contraception: A Retrospective Study in Primary Care. Journal of Adolescent Health, 42(1), 97-101. DOI: 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2007.06.016

Lipson, S., & Ellison, P. (2008) Normative study of age variation in salivary progesterone profiles. Journal of Biosocial Science, 24(02). DOI: 10.1017/S0021932000019751

Marchbanks, P., McDonald, J., Wilson, H., Folger, S., Mandel, M., Daling, J., Bernstein, L., Malone, K., Ursin, G., Strom, B.... (2002) Oral Contraceptives and the Risk of Breast Cancer. New England Journal of Medicine, 346(26), 2025-2032. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa013202

Modan B, Hartge P, Hirsh-Yechezkel G, Chetrit A, Lubin F, Beller U, Ben-Baruch G, Fishman A, Menczer J, Struewing JP.... (2001) Parity, oral contraceptives, and the risk of ovarian cancer among carriers and noncarriers of a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation. The New England journal of medicine, 345(4), 235-40. PMID: 11474660

Narod, S., Risch, H., Moslehi, R., Dørum, A., Neuhausen, S., Olsson, H., Provencher, D., Radice, P., Evans, G., Bishop, S.... (1998) Oral Contraceptives and the Risk of Hereditary Ovarian Cancer. New England Journal of Medicine, 339(7), 424-428. DOI: 10.1056/NEJM199808133390702

Ott, M., Adler, N., Millstein, S., Tschann, J., & Ellen, J. (2002) The Trade-Off between Hormonal Contraceptives and Condoms among Adolescents. Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 34(1), 6. DOI: 10.2307/3030227

ROYE, C. (1998) Condom use by hispanic and african-american adolescent girls who use hormonal contraception. Journal of Adolescent Health, 23(4), 205-211. DOI: 10.1016/S1054-139X(97)00264-4

Roye CF, & Seals B. (2001) A qualitative assessment of condom use decisions by female adolescents who use hormonal contraception. The Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care : JANAC, 12(6), 78-87. PMID: 11723916

SAYEGH, M., FORTENBERRY, J., SHEW, M., & ORR, D. (2005) The developmental association of relationship quality, hormonal contraceptive choice and condom non-use among adolescent women. Journal of Adolescent Health, 36(2), 97-97. DOI: 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2004.11.009

SMITH, J., GREEN, J., DEGONZALEZ, A., APPLEBY, P., PETO, J., PLUMMER, M., FRANCESCHI, S., & BERAL, V. (2003) Cervical cancer and use of hormonal contraceptives: a systematic review. The Lancet, 361(9364), 1159-1167. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(03)12949-2

Turner, R., Grindstaff, C., & Phillips, N. (1990) Social Support and Outcome in Teenage Pregnancy. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 31(1), 43. DOI: 10.2307/2137044

Vihko R, & Apter D. (1984) Endocrine characteristics of adolescent menstrual cycles: impact of early menarche. Journal of steroid biochemistry, 20(1), 231-6. PMID: 6231419

Vitzthum, V., & Ringheim, K. (2005) Hormonal Contraception and Physiology: A Research-based Theory of Discontinuation Due to Side Effects. Studies in Family Planning, 36(1), 13-32. DOI: 10.1111/j.1728-4465.2005.00038.x

Vitzthum, V. (2001) Vaginal bleeding patterns among rural highland Bolivian women: relationship to fecundity and fetal loss. Contraception, 64(5), 319-325. DOI: 10.1016/S0010-7824(01)00260-8

Walker, R., Gurven, M., Hill, K., Migliano, A., Chagnon, N., De Souza, R., Djurovic, G., Hames, R., Hurtado, A., Kaplan, H.... (2006) Growth rates and life histories in twenty-two small-scale societies. American Journal of Human Biology, 18(3), 295-311. DOI: 10.1002/ajhb.20510

ZIBNERS, A., CROMER, B., & HAYES, J. (1999) Comparison of continuation rates for hormonal contraception among adolescents. Journal of Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology, 12(2), 90-94. DOI: 10.1016/S1083-3188(00)86633-4

July 16, 2009
01:47 PM
610 views

What does this anthropologist think about hormonal contraception? Part II

by Kate Clancy in Laboratory for Evolutionary Endocrinology

The second part in the series on biological anthropology, ecology, variation, and hormonal contraception.... Read more »

Eaton SB, Pike MC, Short RV, Lee NC, Trussell J, Hatcher RA, Wood JW, Worthman CM, Blurton-Jones NG, Konner MJ.... (1994) Women's reproductive cancers in evolutionary context. Quarterley Review of Biology, 69(3), 353-367.

Eaton, S.B., Strassmann, B.I., Nesse, R.M., Neel, J.V., Ewald, P.W., Williams, G.C., Weder, A.B., Eaton III, S.B., Lindeberg, S., Konner, M.J.... (2002) Evolutionary health promotion. Preventive Medicine, 109-118.

Strassmann, BI. (1997) The biology of menstruation in Homo sapiens: Total lifetime menses, fecundity, and nonsynchrony in a natural-fertility population. Current Anthropology, 38(1), 123-129. DOI: A1997WD24700015

July 16, 2009
02:46 PM
607 views

What does this anthropologist think about hormonal birth control? Part II

by Kate Clancy in Laboratory for Evolutionary Endocrinology

So I've covered a bit of my bias against hormonal contraception ads, and the basic no-nos. But one of the things you may have heard a lot lately is that women don't "need" a period, or even that it is "useless." I'd like to spend a little time unpacking this in the second part of my series.What is normal?Recently, in the beginning of an evolutionary medicine volume, I read in the editors’ opening comments that there is “nothing biologically normal” about monthly menses, as a way to put forward the idea that women should take continuous oral contraceptives (Stearns and Koella 2008, p. 4). Nothing biologically normal? Whether we like it or not, frequent menses in the United States is biologically normal, due to the fact that we eat a lot and don’t move around much at all. We’re at the far end of the spectrum of variation in reproductive function, but we have not fallen off the end of the continuum. On the one hand, I appreciate the attempt of the authors to try to shake things up and introduce the possibility that American physiology is not the global standard, but any body that responds appropriately to its ecology is, by definition, normal. Does this appropriate and evolutionary response to environment have its own consequences? Yes; you can lay the blame for the increased incidence of reproductive cancers in developed countries mostly on the flexible responsiveness and resource allocation capabilities of our reproductive systems. Your genes are important in determining your chances of breast cancer, but so are cumulated years of cheese fries and driving to work. (And before you think this is some sort of diatribe against overweight folks, plenty of normal weight folks – normal for Americans – have more unhealthy eating patterns than overweight folks. It’s not how you look but how you live, even when in broad strokes evidence can initially suggest it’s about the weight one carries.)Here is the reason Stearns and Koella (2008), and Eaton (Eaton et al. 1994; Eaton et al. 2002), and others have been advocating continuous hormonal contraceptive use: it may decrease reproductive cancer rates. Let’s take a step back and first understand the context under which the human female reproductive system evolved: once upon a time we were eating less and moving more. Age at menarche (that’s when we get our first menstrual period) used to be much later, menses itself wasn’t particularly heavy or cumbersome, and few cycles were ovulatory (meaning that an egg is released for possible fertilization). Soon after reaching menarche (as in, within a few years) a woman has her first child. She breastfeeds intensively for the first few years, but continues to breastfeed at least occasionally for four years, maybe more. At some point towards the end of breastfeeding, or sometimes not even until breastfeeding was done, she would resume cycling, and in a few cycles likely get pregnant again.This pattern would continue, with some variations based on miscarriages, increasing age, seasonal variation in food availability, and other issues, until the woman hit menopause. Of course, for many women, their lives ended around that point or even before, but some number of women certainly survived to be grandmothers, if observation of current forager populations is any indication. This means that for most of a woman’s reproductive life she was pregnant or breastfeeding, and cycling only occasionally. Strassmann has a great analysis of this and comparison between populations (Strassmann 1997): the punchline is that an industrialized woman of today has around 400 menstrual cycles, while our ancestors, if modern foragers are an indication, had 50-100.Now let’s look at today’s industrialized, or developed-country woman: like men, she eats more and moves around less, largely because she is in school or working rather than getting her own food. She hits menarche earlier, and menses are more frequent and copious than her ancestors, which creates lots of tissue remodeling in the endometrium (the lining of the uterus). Many of her cycles are ovulatory, necessitating frequent tissue remodeling for the ovaries. She may cycle for years before having her first child, even decades, and with those frequent cycles come a higher exposure to endogenous (coming from within the body rather than a pill) sex steroids like estradiol and progesterone. Even if she breastfeeds for years, she will likely resume menstrual cycling sooner than her ancestors because she is better fed. She will probably have fewer pregnancies and births than her ancestors, which means more cycles in between pregnancies. She will most likely make it to menopause and beyond; because she is so much more likely to make it past menopause we are far more likely to notice the negative effects of all that hormone exposure, in the form of reproductive cancers.So while I disagree with the idea that there is “nothing biologically normal” about frequent menstrual cycles, I certainly agree that they are not doing us any favors. But is it the reproductive system that is at fault or the lifestyle? Should we artificially suppress the system in order to promote health, or make changes to the way we live? I’m sure the answer lies somewhere in between, at least as we move towards building more sustainable neighborhoods and taking better care of our environment in developed countries.The third part of this series will address population variation in reproductive function, and how this impacts the efficacy and side effect incidence of hormonal contraceptives.ReferencesEaton SB, Pike MC, Short RV, Lee NC, Trussell J, Hatcher RA, Wood JW, Worthman CM, Blurton-Jones NG, Konner MJ, Hill KR, & Bailey R (1994). Women's reproductive cancers in evolutionary context Quarterley Review of Biology, 69 (3), 353-367Eaton, S.B., Strassmann, B.I., Nesse, R.M., Neel, J.V., Ewald, P.W., Williams, G.C., Weder, A.B., Eaton III, S.B., Lindeberg, S., Konner, M.J., Mysterud, I., & Cordain, L. (2002). Evolutionary health promotion Preventive Medicine, 34, 109-118Stearns S, and Koella J, editors. 2008. Evolution in health and disease. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Strassmann, BI (1997). The biology of menstruation in Homo sapiens: Total lifetime menses, fecundity, and nonsynchrony in a natural-fertility population Current Anthropology, 38 (1), 123-129 DOI: A1997WD24700015This post was written by Kathryn Clancy for the Laboratory for Evolutionary Endocrinology Blog. Except as noted, it is (C)Kathryn Clancy and licensed under a Creative Commons License. The opinions on this blog are the opinions of the blog author only, not the author's employer or colleagues.... Read more »

Eaton SB, Pike MC, Short RV, Lee NC, Trussell J, Hatcher RA, Wood JW, Worthman CM, Blurton-Jones NG, Konner MJ.... (1994) Women's reproductive cancers in evolutionary context. Quarterley Review of Biology, 69(3), 353-367.

Eaton, S.B., Strassmann, B.I., Nesse, R.M., Neel, J.V., Ewald, P.W., Williams, G.C., Weder, A.B., Eaton III, S.B., Lindeberg, S., Konner, M.J.... (2002) Evolutionary health promotion. Preventive Medicine, 109-118.

Strassmann, BI. (1997) The biology of menstruation in Homo sapiens: Total lifetime menses, fecundity, and nonsynchrony in a natural-fertility population. Current Anthropology, 38(1), 123-129. DOI: A1997WD24700015

March 24, 2011
03:01 PM
598 views

Around the web: put attention where it needs to be put

by Kate Clancy in Context & Variation

Yesterday I submitted a book chapter and a journal manuscript. I have two substantial blog posts I'm working on, but neither will be ready for this week. However, I have been slowly accumulating Posts of Awesome that I'd like to share. I want to highlight people, writing, and topics that need and deserve more attention in the science blogosphere. I mention a lot of these things on Twitter, but I know a lot of my followers don't use Twitter. So here goes.LadybusinessIf you have any interest in pregnancy, labor and birth, I do hope you're reading Science and Sensibility. S&S is a evidence-based blog written by practitioners and scientists, sponsored by Lamaze International. I really like their more technical, informative posts on labor and birth, and today's post on positioning during the second stage of labor is a winner. The writing is always accessible for layfolks, yet still provides great information for scientists and medical folk.Remember that Wax et al (2010) article showing homebirth had a mortality rate three times higher than a hospital birth (and the sensational Lancet editorial)? A lot of folks came down hard on the article when it first came out, myself included, but two more pieces came out yesterday that call into question the authors' conclusions. The first issue is that there were actual mathematical errors in the data (meaning, the data was probably entered into an excel sheet incorrectly), the second is that they fundamentally did the meta-analysis wrong. Wrong. As in, according to one statistician who had no stake in the story or topic, so wrong as to overlook all its other problems.A few more spicy tidbits: cosmetic breast surgery is on the rise, and one county in Florida has a 70% cesarean rate. Seventy. Percent. Due to some smart marketing and bad decisions, a treatment to prevent pre-term birth that used to be affordable is now more expensive than gold.Something a little more fun: older female elephants make better leaders. Here's a video to go with the paper.Finally, this is sort of ladybusiness, but as Dr. Isis points out, it should really be family (or even just human) business: Why it's alright to not be your mother, a guest post on AGORA.Queering biologyThe reverberations from Jesse Bering's post on homophobia as an adaptation continue. And the responses have been brilliant. I especially love Jeremy Yoder's take over at his blog, Denim and Tweed: An adaptive fairytale with no happy ending.And then today, DeLene Beeland shared this great post on Twitter: How to Queer Ecology: One Goose at a Time over at Orion Magazine. This is a beautifully-written, thoughtful takedown of the naturalistic fallacy.Other things to read right nowDanielle Lee has two great pieces worth reading (and I found them both because of Greg Laden): an article on the contribution of Henrietta Lacks, and the Black community, to cell culture, and a profile on Danielle in a natural hair series at Essence.com.I read this article today by Gina Trapani on her work to make the technical world more friendly to women and other underrepresented or new folks.An interesting interview and review of the book Consumption, by Kevin Patterson: How western diets are making the world sick.A piece on Impostor Syndrome at SciAm (behind a paywall). I don't want to pathologize all underrepresented groups in science (because frankly, these feelings make sense in the context of environment, even if it's desirable to move beyond them), but issues around impostor syndrome resonate with me.The video for the MLK, Jr session from Science Online 2011 is now up. Alberto Roca, Danielle Lee and David Kroll are the fabulous panelists.Things I wish I didn't have to link toOur amusement with Charlie Sheen just demonstrates how little we care about violence against women -- especially certain kinds of women. Read The Disposable Woman.Skepchick Rebecca Watson shares some of her hate mail, and why she doesn't feel like internetting today: Why I deserved to be called an offensive bitch.Pat Campbell reposted a twelve-year-old manifesto on gender and education that still holds true: The Gender Wars Must Cease.Some LOLz and some cutes: a section I added because the last three links were so depressingThis first link doesn't exactly bring the LOLz, but is an enjoyable read: Female Science Professor continues her series on Academic Novels.Some great apes from Zooborns: a two new baby orangs, and baby chimp. They put my maternal instinct into overdrive.And a LOLcat via Scicurious: I'z in yer papers, messin' wit yer stats.ReferencesWax, J., Lucas, F., Lamont, M., Pinette, M., Cartin, A., & Blackstone, J. (2010). Maternal and newborn outcomes in planned home birth vs planned hospital births: a metaanalysis American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology DOI: 10.1016/j.ajog.2010.05.028... Read more »

Wax, J., Lucas, F., Lamont, M., Pinette, M., Cartin, A., & Blackstone, J. (2010) Maternal and newborn outcomes in planned home birth vs planned hospital births: a metaanalysis. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. DOI: 10.1016/j.ajog.2010.05.028

Editorial staff. (2010) Home birth--proceed with caution. Lancet, 376(9738), 303. PMID: 20674705

April 4, 2011
12:03 PM
597 views

LabEvoEndo Journal Club: Sophia Bodnar presents on cervical cancer

by Kate Clancy in Laboratory for Evolutionary Endocrinology

Student blogging on cervical cancer and immunology, particular in understanding variation in cytokines, chemokines, and proportions of columnar vs squamous cervical cells.... Read more »

Hwang LY, Scott ME, Ma Y, & Moscicki AB. (2011) Higher levels of cervicovaginal inflammatory and regulatory cytokines and chemokines in healthy young women with immature cervical epithelium. Journal of reproductive immunology, 88(1), 66-71. PMID: 21051089

June 21, 2011
09:30 PM
592 views

C&V Shorts: Make the most of your time and energy

by Kate Clancy in Context & Variation

A short post on life history theory as it applies to human societies, menarche, and stature.... Read more »

McIntyre MH, & Kacerosky PM. (2011) Age and size at maturity in women: a norm of reaction?. American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council, 23(3), 305-12. PMID: 21484909

Walker, R., Gurven, M., Hill, K., Migliano, A., Chagnon, N., De Souza, R., Djurovic, G., Hames, R., Hurtado, A., Kaplan, H.... (2006) Growth rates and life histories in twenty-two small-scale societies. American Journal of Human Biology, 18(3), 295-311. DOI: 10.1002/ajhb.20510

July 17, 2009
07:17 AM
587 views

What does this anthropologist think about hormonal contraception? Part III

by Kate Clancy in Laboratory for Evolutionary Endocrinology

Part three of my ongoing series on hormonal contraception and reproductive function, from the perspective of anthropology.... Read more »

Baerwald A, Olatunbosun O, & Pierson R. (2006) Effects of oral contraceptives administered at defined stages of ovarian follicular development. Fertility and Sterility, 86(1), 27-35.

Ellison PT. (1990) Human ovarian function and reproductive ecology: new hypotheses. American Anthropologist, 94(2), 933-952.

Vitzthum VJ, Spielvogel H, Caceres E, & Miller A. (2001) Vaginal bleeding patterns among rural highland Bolivian women: relationship to fecundity and fetal loss. Contraception, 319-325.

Vitzthum VJ, Spielvogel H, & Thornburg J. (2004) Interpopulational differences in progesterone levels during conception and implantation in humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 101(6), 1443-1448.

July 23, 2009
12:02 PM
570 views

What does this anthropologist think about hormonal birth control? Part V

by Kate Clancy in Laboratory for Evolutionary Endocrinology

Last part in five part series on hormonal contraception, population variation, cultural conditioning, and behavior.... Read more »

Huang C, & Sedlack DL. (2001) Analysis of estrogenic hormones in municipal wastewater effluent and surface water using ELISA and GC/MS/MS. Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, 20(1), 133-139.

March 24, 2011
03:21 PM
562 views

LabEvoEndo Journal Club: Laura Klein presents on food allergies

by Kate Clancy in Laboratory for Evolutionary Endocrinology

Undergraduate Laura Klein reviews an article on food allergies.... Read more »

Christie L, Hine RJ, Parker JG, & Burks W. (2002) Food allergies in children affect nutrient intake and growth. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 102(11), 1648-51. PMID: 12449289

Fernandez-Rivas, M, & Miles, S. (2007) Chapter 1. Food allergies: Clinical and Psychosocial Perspectives. Plant Food Allergens. info:/

July 1, 2011
08:50 PM
556 views

Summer of the pill: will the pill mess up my chances at finding my One True Love?

by Kate Clancy in Context & Variation

Next in the summer of the pill series. This week I deal with research that shows the pill alters women's mate preferences.... Read more »

Bereczkei T, Voros S, Gal A, & Bernath L. (1997) Resources, attractiveness, family commitment; reproductive decisions in human mate choice. Ethology : formerly Zeitschrift fur Tierpsychologie, 103(8), 681-99. PMID: 12293453

Brinsmead-Stockham K, Johnston L, Miles L, & Neil Macrae C. (2008) Female sexual orientation and menstrual influences on person perception. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44(3), 729-734. DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2007.05.003

Burleson MH, Trevathan WR, & Gregory WL. (2002) Sexual behavior in lesbian and heterosexual women: relations with menstrual cycle phase and partner availability. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 27(4), 489-503. PMID: 11912001

Buston PM, & Emlen ST. (2003) Cognitive processes underlying human mate choice: The relationship between self-perception and mate preference in Western society. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 100(15), 8805-10. PMID: 12843405

Kurzban R, & Weeden J. (2005) HurryDate: Mate preferences in action. Evolution and Human Behavior, 26(3), 227-244. DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2004.08.012

Pawłowski B, & Dunbar RI. (1999) Impact of market value on human mate choice decisions. Proceedings. Biological sciences / The Royal Society, 266(1416), 281-5. PMID: 10081164

Roberts SC, Gosling LM, Carter V, & Petrie M. (2008) MHC-correlated odour preferences in humans and the use of oral contraceptives. Proceedings. Biological sciences / The Royal Society, 275(1652), 2715-22. PMID: 18700206

Wedekind C, Seebeck T, Bettens F, & Paepke AJ. (1995) MHC-Dependent Mate Preferences in Humans. Proceedings: Biological Sciences, 260(1359), 245-249. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.1995.0087

March 16, 2011
12:27 PM
516 views

On bad first drafts

by Kate Clancy in Context & Variation

From I Can Haz Cheezburger.My blogging mojo has been channeled almost entirely towards a book project I've undertaken with Julienne Rutherford of UIC and Katie Hinde of UCLA (though shortly to be of Harvard). The book is called Building Babies: Primate Development in Proximate and Ultimate Perspective and it will be published by Springer in 2012. Each co-editor has a chapter in there, and then we have a number of other rather fancy-pants contributors as well.The first drafts of the chapters were due yesterday. I did not submit my chapter (er, to myself). I'm running about a week late. I thought I would come clean with this, because there are a number of elements of the writing process that I think remain obscure for students and other junior scholars. And after I share a few thoughts about academic writing, I thought I would show you some of the draft I'm working on.First drafts suckThey really, really do. If you think your first draft is amazing, give it to someone else, and that someone else can't be a pet, spouse or parent. First drafts suck because we write the most obvious things in them, the most vague. First drafts don't have enough context. First drafts are where you use cliches because you haven't figured out how to say what you're saying in a sophisticated way. They are often under-cited. They are out of order. And, they aren't that compelling.This is why so much student writing is bad -- but it's not their fault. Close together deadlines, ones that align with other projects, and little teaching of time management means most students start writing projects just before they are due. So they essentially submit first drafts of papers, with a little copyediting if you're lucky. Plus, somehow a lot of students have picked up this idea that first drafts are better or more authentic than revisions. This is patently false. They are simply the place our favorite worst stuff goes to die (this is why revision is so often called killing our darlings, to use a term from scio11, though its origin is much older).But everyone has bad first drafts, so it is absolutely useless to feel bad about them. Give them to your advisor or your colleague if they have said they will read a first draft (otherwise, revise it after consulting with someone else first). They write bad first drafts too. You have to write a first draft in order to get to the revision, and to me, this was a liberating realization. Get it all out now! Don't worry about using the right word! Just get the words on the page, get about the right content in about the right order, and if something is repetitive, just leave it for now. Because after a little breather away from it, or a look from a trusted colleague or advisor, you will hack it up and remake it into something far better.Revising only sucks sometimesRevising sucks when you get your first comments back from a colleague, because it is terrifying to share that vulnerable, bad first draft with another person (ever had that moment after you print it out or hit send when you realize your prized metaphor was a trembling nod to your failed attempt as a fiction writer?). It sucks at those moments when you feel at cross-purposes with the thesis of your paper. And it's frustrating, also, that revising is the most important yet under-taught skill in academic writing.But here's the thing. Revising can be glorious. If you abandon any sense that you own your words, and remember only to own your mind, it allows you to be merciless in cutting out all the badness of that first draft: the cliches, the vague repetition, the jargon. If you return again and again to your outline, or abstract, or data, or whatever materials you keep to help you remember what the paper is about, you will start to see the right shape of the piece. And then you can also build in the context.The best moments of revision are when you remember why you were writing the piece in the first place. Do you want to produce a fundamental review that will be useful to other practitioners in your field? Do you have an amazing piece of data to share? A well-grounded hypothesis that you want to articulate? What was surprising or compelling about that work when you first set fingers to keyboard?One last thing I'll say about revising is that owning your mind is not the same as owning your ideas. You need to be willing to let go of being right, and you need to be willing to change if the evidence is against you. Accepting reality and working with it in an interesting way is the mark of a good scientist, and a good revision.My first drafts suckThe title of my chapter is: "Inflammatory factors that produce variation in ovarian and endometrial functioning" (eventually, I think, I will need to change the title to better reflect the manuscript). I thought this would be an easy piece for me, since I have been doing a lot of work on C-reactive protein, a biomarker for systemic inflammation, and I have been studying the endometrium and ovaries for many years.I was wrong. Oh, so wrong.A few quick searches pulled up an embarrassingly large number of citations for chemokines and cytokines, for toll-like receptors, natural killer cells, and other immunological terms I barely remembered from high school and college. So I re-drafted my outline, set aside a lot of time for reading (as in, several days straight), and then finally set to work.The problem with the literature on this topic is that it is wholly mechanistic. I can now tell you what interleukins are expressed in the periovulatory phase versus the implantation window, or which ones are suppressed or overexpressed for certain pathologies, but I can't tell you what that means in a broader sense, or what produces variation in any of these immunological factors in a systemic way that might impact local inflammation in the female reproductive system.Here is my section on normal endometrial functioning (alas, given the literature, the section on pathology in the endometrium is far, far longer). First draft ahead! Remember, I am sharing this embarrassingly bad prose for the good of SCIENCE.The endometrium is composed of the functionalis and basalis layers; the functionalis comprises two thirds of the endometrium and is the part that proliferates and sheds each reproductive cycle. The basalis is adjacent to the myometrium, and is the place from which the endometrium regenerates after menses. The proliferative (also known as follicular) phase is when estradiol promotes proliferation of endometrial tissue, where the secretory (also known as luteal) phase is characterized by progesterone control of decidualization and menstruation. The endometrium typically proliferates with narrow, straight glands and a thin surface epithelium, and angiongenesis continues as ovulation nears (King and Critchley 2010). After ovulation and during the secretory phase, the endometrium differentiates: endometrial glands become increasingly secretory, and by the late secretory phase spiral arterioles form. If implantation does not occur, the corpus luteum degrades, progesterone declines, and this triggers a cascade of events to produce menstruation.Menstruation is a key inflammatory process of the endometrium. Menstruation is when the functionalis are shed at the end of the human reproductive cycle. The basalis regenerates over the course of the next cycle. The demise of the corpus luteum and the associated withdrawal of progesterone precipitate inflammatory mediators that cause tissue degradation. For instance, progesterone inhibits nuclear factor κ B (NF-κB), which increases the expression of inflammatory cytokines like IL-1 and IL-6 (Maybin et al. 2011). The withdrawal of progesterone is also associated with an increase in endometrial leukocytes and IL-8, which regulate the repair process (Maybin et al. 2011). At this time other inflammatory factors promote MMP production to break down endometrial tissue (Maybin et al. 2011). Further, it is thought that progesterone withdrawal, not an increase in estradiol concentrations, leads to the repair of the endometrium so that it can resume activity for the next cycle (Maybin et al. 2011). Thus, variation in progesterone concentrations may lead to variation in inflammatory activity, degradation, repair and cycling in the endometrium.First question: why should I care about any of the above? So what if any of this happens? Then, you might not know this, but I do: the only two citations in these two paragraphs are both review papers, and one of the authors overlap between them. Therefore, it's quite under-cited. To be fair, in this section it is less important that I demonstrate the depth of the literature, but a review that only cites two other reviews isn't doing its job.... Read more »

King, A., & Critchley, H. (2010) Oestrogen and progesterone regulation of inflammatory processes in the human endometrium. The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 120(2-3), 116-126. DOI: 10.1016/j.jsbmb.2010.01.003

Maybin JA, Critchley HO, & Jabbour HN. (2011) Inflammatory pathways in endometrial disorders. Molecular and cellular endocrinology, 335(1), 42-51. PMID: 20723578

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Kate Clancy

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