The weaker sex

Women are built to last longer than men.

The life expectancy for boys born in the United States — about 75 years — is five years less than for girls. At nearly
every age, males die at higher rates than females, and this vulnerability holds true around the world, from industrialized
nations to isolated tribes of huntergatherers.

Experts haven’t come up with a fully satisfactory explanation. Some chalk it up to macho risk taking. Men die from
suicide and homicide at three to four times the rate of women. They die from cirrhosis of the liver — usually the result
of alcoholism — at more than twice the rate of women. Men are about 77 percent more likely to die in car accidents
than women. Men also outnumber women in dangerous jobs and so account for about 90 percent of on-the-job deaths.

But that isn’t the half of it, according to Portland scientists, who have proposed a deeper explanation for the male
survival disadvantage.

Soon after conception, as embryos in their mothers’ wombs, males adopt a risky, fast-growth strategy. And that
appears to set a trajectory that makes them more vulnerable than females during fetal development and for the rest of
their lives, say Dr. David Barker and Dr. Kent Thornburg, both professors at Oregon Health & Science University.

“It’s a core question in human biology why women live longer than men,” Barker says. “There have to be some core
answers.”

• Scientists have known for years that the survival edge begins in the womb. About 120 males are conceived per
100 females, probably because sperm carrying the male Y chromosome swim faster than those carrying the female X
chromosome and are more likely to win the race to fertilize an egg. But male fetuses succumb to miscarriage at a
higher rate than females, cutting the sex ratio at birth to about 105 boys per 100 girls.

The cause of this dramatic culling remains unclear. Barker and Thornburg believe it is rooted in the male growth
strategy. Their reasoning goes like this: Male embryos grow faster than females, and that entails critical trade-offs, such
as investing less in the growth of their placenta, the organ that connects them with their mother’s blood supply. At the
same time, males need more energy to support their fast growth, which puts them at greater risk of malnourishment if
the mother suffers a food shortage, injury or sickness.

Please see LONGEVITY, Page A4

To read the online study:

oregonlive.

com/health

Why do men tend to die younger than women? A couple of OHSU researchers blame risky behavior —
that starts in the womb

By JOE ROJAS-BURKE

THE OREGONIAN
ISTOCKPHOTO

See LONGEVITY on Page A04

Longevity:

‘Live hard, die young’ is one strategy

Continued from Page One

Previous researchers have shown that the number of male births drops compared with female births during times of
severe deprivation, for example, in the famines in Holland during World War II.

Barker and Thornburg say it’s likely that the male rapidgrowth strategy also sets the stage for male susceptibility to
many diseases in later life. “If the mother, or the placenta, is inadequate, babies must compromise the structural quality
of their organs as they develop,” Thornburg says. “This makes them vulnerable as adults.”

This supports the “fetal origins hypothesis” Barker has championed for years, which asserts that subtle deprivation of
nutrients during fetal development can produce longlasting changes in organs and metabolism. In adulthood, the
changes can trigger high blood pressure, heart disease and other diseases.

Other researchers say many factors probably contribute to the female advantage. Estrogen, the female sex hormone,
for example, keeps the immune system running strong, while testosterone can suppress immunity. Estrogen helps
balance cholesterol and may protect arteries from hardening and clogging. Female cells, at least in some animal
studies, also pump out more antioxidant enzymes than male cells to better disarm DNA-damaging chemicals.

Nevertheless, says Vicki Clifton, a professor at the University of Adelaide in Australia, the ideas put forward by Barker
and Thornburg seem plausible.

“Our research (in fetal development) shows that males keep growing and females reduce growth if there is a problem
during the pregnancy,” she says. “Females adjust in response to the first problem, and if there are any reductions in
oxygen or nutrients subsequently due to another problem, they survive while males don’t do so well.”

• Why male embryos commit to such a risky fast-growth strategy remains a mystery.

Clifton says it may have evolved long ago in human evolution as a way for males to produce more offspring.

“It’s important to be big if you are a male because in most animal populations you fertilize more females and therefore
you spread your genes further and ensure your gene pool survives,” she says.

Evolutionary theory predicts such differences in species in which female reproduction is limited by how often they can
give birth and how much they can put into rearing babies, while males can maximize their offspring by having sex with
as many females as possible. These circumstances create pressure for males to adopt a “live hard, die young” strategy,
says Marlene Zuk, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California at Riverside.

Zuk says the longevity gap between men and women is rooted in such a complex and ancient series of steps in
evolution that no one will ever be able to point to a single cause for women living longer — and it may never be
possible to close the longevity gap.

“None of this is to say that we should give up and let males smoke, drink or infect themselves to death,” she says in a
recent essay. It’s just that there is nothing unnatural about a sex difference in longevity.

Joe Rojas-Burke: 503-412-7073, joerojas@news.oregonian.com

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