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Objective assessment of tapering of the fingers in adults

Mild proximal-to-distal tapering of the fingers is a relatively common trait in humans. When more extreme, finger tapering is a feature observed in many genetic syndromes. The range of variation for finger tapering in the general population is not well understood, and sex differences in the degree o...

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Autor principal: Weinberg, Seth M.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9797067/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36576913
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0279202
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author Weinberg, Seth M.
author_facet Weinberg, Seth M.
author_sort Weinberg, Seth M.
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description Mild proximal-to-distal tapering of the fingers is a relatively common trait in humans. When more extreme, finger tapering is a feature observed in many genetic syndromes. The range of variation for finger tapering in the general population is not well understood, and sex differences in the degree of tapering, while suspected, have not been documented. Part of the difficulty is a lack of objective methods to evaluate finger tapering. In the present report, we developed a tapering index based on linear measures derived from digital hand scans. We measured this index in a sample of 166 male and 166 age-matched female adults. We then looked at correlations both among fingers and with demographic and anthropometric variables, followed by tests for sex differences. We observed weak correlations between tapering and age, height and weight. Correlations between pairs of fingers tended to be more in the moderate range and were highest among the middle three fingers (ranging from 0.34 to 0.64). Tapering tended to increase slightly moving radially across the hand from the fifth finger to the second finger. Males showed less tapering than females for all fingers, with statistically significant differences involving the left second finger (p = 0.003), left fifth finger (p< 0.001), right second finger (p = 0.038), and right fourth finger (p = 0.021). Finally, we established baseline norms for both males and females out to three standard deviations. Our results indicate that finger tapering is present, to some degree, in most of the population and that the trait can be measured using a relatively simple and non-invasive method. These findings may have relevance for fields as diverse as medical genetics, forensics, and industrial design.
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spelling pubmed-97970672022-12-29 Objective assessment of tapering of the fingers in adults Weinberg, Seth M. PLoS One Research Article Mild proximal-to-distal tapering of the fingers is a relatively common trait in humans. When more extreme, finger tapering is a feature observed in many genetic syndromes. The range of variation for finger tapering in the general population is not well understood, and sex differences in the degree of tapering, while suspected, have not been documented. Part of the difficulty is a lack of objective methods to evaluate finger tapering. In the present report, we developed a tapering index based on linear measures derived from digital hand scans. We measured this index in a sample of 166 male and 166 age-matched female adults. We then looked at correlations both among fingers and with demographic and anthropometric variables, followed by tests for sex differences. We observed weak correlations between tapering and age, height and weight. Correlations between pairs of fingers tended to be more in the moderate range and were highest among the middle three fingers (ranging from 0.34 to 0.64). Tapering tended to increase slightly moving radially across the hand from the fifth finger to the second finger. Males showed less tapering than females for all fingers, with statistically significant differences involving the left second finger (p = 0.003), left fifth finger (p< 0.001), right second finger (p = 0.038), and right fourth finger (p = 0.021). Finally, we established baseline norms for both males and females out to three standard deviations. Our results indicate that finger tapering is present, to some degree, in most of the population and that the trait can be measured using a relatively simple and non-invasive method. These findings may have relevance for fields as diverse as medical genetics, forensics, and industrial design. Public Library of Science 2022-12-28 /pmc/articles/PMC9797067/ /pubmed/36576913 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0279202 Text en © 2022 Seth M. Weinberg https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Weinberg, Seth M.
Objective assessment of tapering of the fingers in adults
title Objective assessment of tapering of the fingers in adults
title_full Objective assessment of tapering of the fingers in adults
title_fullStr Objective assessment of tapering of the fingers in adults
title_full_unstemmed Objective assessment of tapering of the fingers in adults
title_short Objective assessment of tapering of the fingers in adults
title_sort objective assessment of tapering of the fingers in adults
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9797067/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36576913
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0279202
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