Menstrual cycle phase does not predict political conservatism

Recent authors have reported a relationship between women's fertility status, as indexed by menstrual cycle phase, and conservatism in moral, social and political values. We conducted a survey to test for the existence of a relationship between menstrual cycle day and conservatism. 2213 women reporting regular menstrual cycles provided data about their political views. Of these women, 2208 provided information about their cycle date, 1260 provided additional evidence of reliability in self-reported cycle date, and of these, 750 also indicated an absence of hormonal disruptors such as recent hormonal contraception use, breastfeeding or pregnancy. Cycle day was used to estimate day-specific fertility rate (probability of conception); political conservatism was measured via direct self-report and via responses to the "Moral Foundations” questionnaire. We also recorded relationship status, which has been reported to interact with menstrual cycle phase in determining political preferences. We found no evidence of a relationship between estimated cyclical fertility changes and conservatism, and no evidence of an interaction between relationship status and cyclical fertility in determining political attitudes. Our findings were robust to multiple inclusion/exclusion criteria and to different methods of estimating fertility and measuring conservatism. In summary, the relationship between cycle-linked reproductive parameters and conservatism may be weaker or less reliable than previously thought

An Updated Meta-Analysis of Risk of Multiple Sclerosis following Infectious Mononucleosis

Background: Multiple sclerosis (MS) appears to develop in genetically susceptible individuals as a result of environmental exposures. Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection is an almost universal finding among individuals with MS. Symptomatic EBV infection as manifested by infectious mononucleosis (IM) has been shown in a previous meta-analysis to be associated with the risk of MS, however a number of much larger studies have since been published.Methods/Principal Findings: We performed a Medline search to identify articles published since the original meta-analysis investigating MS risk following IM. A total of 18 articles were included in this study, including 19390 MS patients and 16007 controls. We calculated the relative risk of MS following IM using a generic inverse variance with random effects model. This showed that the risk of MS was strongly associated with IM (relative risk (RR) 2.17; 95% confidence interval 1.97-2.39; p<10(-54)).Discussion: Our results establish firmly that a history of infectious mononucleosis significantly increases the risk of multiple sclerosis. Future work should focus on the mechanism of this association and interaction with other risk factors

Space-time clustering of multiple sclerosis cases around birth

Objectives - To investigate whether infectious events around birth and during early infancy are likely to be of relevance in MS pathogenesis. Subjects and methods - Data are available from two regions in The Netherlands: Groningen (n = 320) and Rotterdam (n = 226). Simultaneous clustering in birth date and birth location of MS cases is tested by the methods of Mantel, Knox and Jacquez. Results - No evidence was found for a space-time interaction between place and time of birth. Conclusion - Perinatal infectious events are unlikely to be a major factor in determining MS susceptibility. (C) Munksgaard 1998