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Gender Diagnosticity and Androgen Receptor Gene CAG Repeat Sequence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 February 2012

John C. Loehlin*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Texas, Austin, TX, United States of America. loehlin@psy.utexas.edu
Erik G. Jönsson
Affiliation:
Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden.
J. Petter Gustavsson
Affiliation:
Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden.
Martin Schalling
Affiliation:
Department of Molecular Medicine, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden.
Sarah E. Medland
Affiliation:
Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Brisbane, Australia.
Grant W. Montgomery
Affiliation:
Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Brisbane, Australia.
Nicholas G. Martin
Affiliation:
Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Brisbane, Australia.
*
*Address for correspondence: J. C. Loehlin, University of Texas, Psychology Department, 1 University Station A8000, Austin, TX 78712–0187, USA.

Abstract

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The gender diagnosticity (GD) approach of Lippa (1995) was used to evaluate the relationship of within-sex differences in psychological masculinity–femininity to a genetic characteristic, the length of a repeated CAG sequence in the X-linked androgen receptor (AR) gene. Previously assessed adult samples in Australia and Sweden were used for this purpose. A weak relationship (correlations in the range .11 to .14) was obtained in both countries. Additional data from adolescent twins from Australia (12-, 14-, 16-year-olds) did not confirm such a relationship at those ages, especially for males. The fact that this sample consisted of twins permitted two kinds of within-pair comparisons: (1) Did the dizygotic twin who had the longer AR sequence have the higher GD score? (2) Was one twin's GD score more highly correlated with the other twin's AR score in MZ than in DZ pairs? The answer in both cases was negative. Clarification of these relationships will require large samples and measurements at additional ages.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2004