More men carry additional sex chromosomes than previously thought, according to the Guardian.
It adds that while most men have XY chromosomes, some have XXY or XYY chromosomes, but that that was thought to be rare. A new analysis from Cambridge University and University of Exeter Medical School researchers, though, finds it may be more common. Using data on 207,067 men of European ancestry from the UK Biobank, the researchers identified 213 individuals with XXY and 143 individuals with XYY chromosomes, as they report in Genetics in Medicine. This, the Guardian adds, suggests that almost 1 in 500 men have an extra sex chromosome.
"We were surprised at how common this is," senior author Ken Ong from the MRC epidemiology unit at Cambridge tells the Guardian. "It had been thought to be pretty rare."
The team further found that only portion of those individuals had a known diagnosis of an extra sex chromosome. XXY and XYY chromosomes, they note in their paper, are associated with increased disease risk and, in their cohort, they found an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, venous thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, and more.