Low Gestational Weight Gain Skews Human Sex Ratios towards Females

BACKGROUND: Human males are more vulnerable to adverse conditions than females starting early in gestation and continuing throughout life, and previous studies show that severe food restriction can influence the sex ratios of human births. It remains unclear, however, whether subtle differences in caloric intake during gestation alter survival of fetuses in a sex-specific way. I hypothesized that the ratio of male to female babies born should vary with the amount of weight gained during gestation. I predicted that women who gain low amounts of weight during gestation should produce significantly more females, and that, if gestational weight gain directly influences sex ratios, fetal losses would be more likely to be male when women gain inadequate amounts of weight during pregnancy. METHODS: I analyzed data collected from over 68 million births over 23 years to test for a relationship between gestational weight gain and natal sex ratios, as well as between gestational weight gain and sex ratios of fetal deaths at five gestational ages. RESULTS: Gestational weight gain and the proportion of male births were positively correlated; a lower proportion of males was produced by women who gained less weight and this strong pattern was exhibited in four human races. Further, sex ratios of fetal losses at 6 months of gestation were significantly male-biased when mothers had gained low amounts of weight during pregnancy, suggesting that low caloric intake during early fetal development can stimulate the loss of male fetuses. CONCLUSION: My data indicate that human sex ratios change in response to resource availability via sex-specific fetal loss, and that a pivotal time for influences on male survival is early in fetal development, at 6 months of gestation.