The "grandmother hypothesis" proposes that menopause evolved because ancestral middle-aged women gained greater reproductive success from investing in extant genetic relatives than from continuing to reproduce [Williams GC. Pleiotropy, natural selection, and the evolution of senescence. Evolution 1957;11:398-411]. Because middle-aged women faced greater risks of maternal death during pregnancy ...

Abstract This study aimed to examine the role of grandparental co-residence in shaping coparenting patterns Chinese family context. Using a sample 5,795 children (Mean age = 6.74 years; SD 3.82) from China Family Panel Studies 2012-2018, we offered novel typology six based on daytime and nighttime childcare information: a) care only (15.4%); b) grandparent-parent (10.9%); c) parental (44.5%); d...

The Leiden Roster for Huntington's disease (HD) contained data on 2617 cases up to July 1988. The age at onset (AO) was known in 1084 cases and in 1020 of these both their AO and the sex of the affected parent was known. The mean AO was higher for females than for males and higher for maternal than for paternal cases. However, in the group born before 1925 only females with maternal inheritance...

An interpersonal stress model of depression transmission was tested in a community sample of nearly 800 depressed and never-depressed women and their 15-year-old children. It was hypothesized that maternal depression (and depression in the maternal grandmother) contributed to chronic interpersonal stress in the mothers, affecting quality of parenting and youths' social competence. In turn, poor...

PURPOSE Mutations in the dystrophin gene result in Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). DMD is associated with an abnormal electroretinogram (ERG) if the mutation disrupts the translation of retinal dystrophin (Dp260). Our aim was to determine if incomplete ERG abnormalities would be associated with heterozygous carriers of dystrophin gene mutations. METHODS Ganzfeld ERGs were obtained under sc...

Isolated glucocorticoid deficiency (IGD) is an autosomal recessive disorder characterized by progressive primary adrenal insufficiency, without mineralocorticoid deficiency. The cDNA and gene of the human ACTH receptor were recently cloned. The gene encodes a 297-amino acid protein that belongs to the G protein-coupled superfamily of membrane receptors. We hypothesized that the ACTH receptor ge...

Age at menarche is correlated within families, but estimates of the heritability of menarcheal age have a wide range (0.45-0.95). We examined the familial resemblance for age at menarche and the extent to which this is due to genetic and shared environmental factors. Between 2003 and 2010 data were retrospectively collected by questionnaire from participants within the UK-based Breakthrough Gen...

Hypotheses for the evolution of human female life-history characteristics have often focused on the social nature of human societies, which allows women to share the burden of childcare and provisioning amongst other members of their kin group. We test the hypothesis that child health and survival probabilities will be improved by the presence of kin using a longitudinal database from rural Gam...

OBJECTIVE We studied familial cases of skeletal myopathy with atrial fibrillation (Af) and atrioventricular (AV) block to compare the clinical features to other myopathies associated with cardiac abnormalities. METHODS Neurologic, cardiologic, electrophysiologic, muscle pathology, and genetic studies were performed on the patients showing muscle weakness. PATIENTS Four patients (a 63-year-o...