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Facial appearance and metabolic health biomarkers in women

Facial appearance has been suggested to provide an honest cue of an individual’s biological condition. However, there is little direct evidence that facial attractiveness reflects actual health. Here we tested if facial appearance is related with metabolic health biomarkers. Face photographs of 161...

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Autores principales: Żelaźniewicz, Agnieszka, Nowak, Judyta, Łącka, Patrycja, Pawłowski, Bogusław
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7398920/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32747662
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-70119-6
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author Żelaźniewicz, Agnieszka
Nowak, Judyta
Łącka, Patrycja
Pawłowski, Bogusław
author_facet Żelaźniewicz, Agnieszka
Nowak, Judyta
Łącka, Patrycja
Pawłowski, Bogusław
author_sort Żelaźniewicz, Agnieszka
collection PubMed
description Facial appearance has been suggested to provide an honest cue of an individual’s biological condition. However, there is little direct evidence that facial attractiveness reflects actual health. Here we tested if facial appearance is related with metabolic health biomarkers. Face photographs of 161 healthy, young women (M(age) = 28.59, SD(age) = 2.34) were assessed in terms of perceived attractiveness and health. Metabolic health was evaluated based on levels of markers of lipid and glucose metabolism balance, liver functioning, and inflammation. BMI, testosterone (T), and estradiol (E2) levels were controlled. Facial attractiveness, but not health, was negatively related with lipid profile components detrimental to health (total cholesterol, LDL, triglycerides) but not with relatively protective for health HDL. When controlled for BMI, E2, and T, only the relationship between attractiveness and triglycerides remained significant. Facial appearance was unrelated with glucose metabolism, liver functioning, and inflammatory markers. The results suggest, that for healthy women of reproductive age, such measures as BMI and sex hormone levels may be better predictors of attractiveness, compared to measures of metabolic health. Markers of lipid, glucose homeostasis, liver functioning or low-grade inflammation may be rather indicators of future health, of lesser importance in mating context, thus only modestly reflected in facial appearance.
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spelling pubmed-73989202020-08-04 Facial appearance and metabolic health biomarkers in women Żelaźniewicz, Agnieszka Nowak, Judyta Łącka, Patrycja Pawłowski, Bogusław Sci Rep Article Facial appearance has been suggested to provide an honest cue of an individual’s biological condition. However, there is little direct evidence that facial attractiveness reflects actual health. Here we tested if facial appearance is related with metabolic health biomarkers. Face photographs of 161 healthy, young women (M(age) = 28.59, SD(age) = 2.34) were assessed in terms of perceived attractiveness and health. Metabolic health was evaluated based on levels of markers of lipid and glucose metabolism balance, liver functioning, and inflammation. BMI, testosterone (T), and estradiol (E2) levels were controlled. Facial attractiveness, but not health, was negatively related with lipid profile components detrimental to health (total cholesterol, LDL, triglycerides) but not with relatively protective for health HDL. When controlled for BMI, E2, and T, only the relationship between attractiveness and triglycerides remained significant. Facial appearance was unrelated with glucose metabolism, liver functioning, and inflammatory markers. The results suggest, that for healthy women of reproductive age, such measures as BMI and sex hormone levels may be better predictors of attractiveness, compared to measures of metabolic health. Markers of lipid, glucose homeostasis, liver functioning or low-grade inflammation may be rather indicators of future health, of lesser importance in mating context, thus only modestly reflected in facial appearance. Nature Publishing Group UK 2020-08-03 /pmc/articles/PMC7398920/ /pubmed/32747662 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-70119-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Żelaźniewicz, Agnieszka
Nowak, Judyta
Łącka, Patrycja
Pawłowski, Bogusław
Facial appearance and metabolic health biomarkers in women
title Facial appearance and metabolic health biomarkers in women
title_full Facial appearance and metabolic health biomarkers in women
title_fullStr Facial appearance and metabolic health biomarkers in women
title_full_unstemmed Facial appearance and metabolic health biomarkers in women
title_short Facial appearance and metabolic health biomarkers in women
title_sort facial appearance and metabolic health biomarkers in women
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7398920/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32747662
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-70119-6
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