Are Left-handers More Prone To Disease?

Posting Date: 07/12/2001

Left-handed people are at twice the risk of developing inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), like colitis, Crone?s disease, and ulcerative colitis. But, we don?t know why.

This was a study that looked at approximately 17,000 people in the United Kingdom. Researchers looked at two groups of people born in 1958 and 1970. Left-handers were identified by hand preference for writing and kicking a ball. More men than women were enrolled in the study, but gender was not associated with an increased risk of IBD.

Seventy-one people had Crohn?s disease or ulcerative colitis. Left-handers were twice as likely to have one of these diseases than right-handers.

Left-handedness has been linked to a lot of things including, autoimmune diseases, asthma, migraine, autism. There is a diabetes study that found left-handers were more prone to diabetes.

No one knows why. Perhaps it is due to a seasonal variation in birth. Researchers have noted in the past that there is a seasonal variation in the birth of left-handed girls. This could implicate environmental factors.

A more controversial explanation suggests that the amount of testosterone the fetus is exposed to in the womb can affect brain and immune system development, so there may be something in common here that causes left-handedness as well as these diseases.

Gut 2001:49:1990202

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