In 1968, a weapon grave with brooches was found at Suontaka Vesitorninmäki, Hattula, Finland. Since then, the grave has been interpreted as evidence of powerful women, even female warriors and leaders in early medieval Finland. Others have denied the possibility of a woman buried with a sword and tried to explain it as a double burial. We present the first modern analysis of the grave, including an examination of its context, a soil sample analysis for microremains, and an aDNA analysis. Based on these analyses, we suggest a new interpretation: the Suontaka grave possibly belonged to an individual with sex-chromosomal aneuploidy XXY. The overall context of the grave indicates that it was a respected person whose gender identity may well have been non-binary.

Females with atrial fibrillation (AF) have been suggested to carry a higher risk for thromboembolic events than males. We compared the residual risk of stroke, bleeding events, and cardiovascular and all-cause mortality among female and male AF patients taking warfarin. Data from several nationwide registries and laboratory databases were linked with the civil registration number of the patients. A total of 54568 patients with data on the quality of warfarin treatment (time in therapeutic range) 60days prior to the events were included (TTR60). Gender differences in the endpoints were reported for the whole population, pre-specified age groups, and different TTR60 groups. During the 3.21.6years follow-up, there were no differences in the adjusted risk of stroke [hazard ratio (HR) 0.97, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.911.03, P=0.304] between the genders. Cardiovascular mortality (HR 0.82, 95% CI 0.780.88, P <0.001) and all-cause mortality (HR 0.79, 95% CI 0.750.83, P <0.001) were lower in women when compared with men. There were no differences in the risk of stroke, cardiovascular mortality, and all-cause mortality between the genders in the TTR60 categories except for those with TTR60 <50%. Bleeding events were less frequent in females (HR 0.52, 95% CI 0.490.56, P <0.001). There were no differences in the risk of stroke between female and male AF patients taking warfarin. Cardiovascular mortality, all-cause mortality, and risk of bleeding events were lower in females. Hence, female gender was not a risk marker for adverse outcomes in AF patients with proper warfarin therapy.

Population-based studies on familial aggregation of haematological malignancies (HM) have rarely focused specifically on early-onset HMs. We estimated standardized incidence ratios (SIR) and cumulative risks of relatives with Hodgkin lymphoma (HL), non-Hodgkin lymphomas (NHL), acute lymphoblastic leukaemia/lymphoma (ALL/LBL) and acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) when index persons and relatives were diagnosed with early-onset HM. A total of 8791 patients aged

Gestation increases the biomechanical loading of lower extremities. Gestational loading may influence anthropometrics of articular surfaces in similar means as bone diaphyseal properties. This study aimed to investigate whether gravidity (i.e. number of pregnancies) and parity (i.e. number of deliveries) is associated with knee breadth among middle-aged women. The study sample comprised 815 women from the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966. The median parity count of our sample was 2 and the median gravidity count 3. At the age of 46, questionnaires were used to enquire gravidity and parity, and posteroanterior knee radiographs were used to obtain two knee breadth parameters (tibial plateau mediolateral breadth (TPML) and femoral condylar mediolateral breadth (FCML)) as representatives of articular size. The associations of gravidity and parity with knee breadth were analyzed using general linear models with adjustments for height, weight, leisure-time physical activity, smoking, and education years. Individuals with osteoarthritic changes were excluded from our sample. The mean TPML in our sample was 70.3 mm and the mean FCML 71.6 mm respectively. In the fully adjusted models, gravidity and parity showed positive associations with knee breadth. Each pregnancy was associated with 0.11–0.14% larger knee breath (p < 0.05), and each delivery accounted for an increase of 0.20% in knee breadth (p < 0.01). Between-group comparisons showed that multiparous women had 0.68–1.01% larger knee breath than nulli- and primiparous women (p < 0.05). Pregnancies and deliveries seem to increase the mediolateral breadth of the knee. This increase is potentially associated with increased biomechanical loadings during gestation.

Background: Sleep facilitates the extraction of semantic regularities amongst newly encoded memories, which may also lead to increased false memories. We investigated sleep stage proportions and sleep spindles in the recollection of adolescents' false memories, and their potential sex-specific differences. Methods: 196 adolescents (mean age 16.9 y; SD = 0.1, 61% girls) underwent the Deese, Roediger & McDermott (DRM) false memory procedure and overnight polysomnography, with free recall the following morning. Sleep was scored manually into stages 1, 2, 3 and REM. Stage 2 sleep spindle frequency, density, and peak amplitude were used as measures of spindle activity for slow (10-13 Hz) and fast (13-16 Hz) ranges. Results: In girls, a lower number of critical lures was associated with higher spindle frequency (p Conclusions: In adolescent girls, higher spindle activity was associated with fewer critical lures being falsely recalled in the DRM paradigm. Unlike studies using adult participants, we did not observe any association between slow-wave sleep and false memory recollection.

Frequent social interactions, proximity to conspecifics, and group density are main drivers of infections and parasite transmissions. However, recent theoretical and empirical studies suggest that the health benefits of sociality and group living can outweigh the costs of infection and help social individuals fight infections or increase their infection-related tolerance level. Here, we combine the advantage of studying artificially created social work groups with different demographic compositions with free-range feeding and social behaviours in semi-captive Asian elephants (Elephas maximus), employed in timber logging in Myanmar. We examine the link between gastro-intestinal nematode load (strongyles and Strongyloides spp.), estimated by faecal egg counts, and three different aspects of an elephant's social world: individual solitary behaviour, work group size, and work group sex ratio. Controlling for sex, age, origin, time since last deworming treatment, year, human sampler bias, and individual identity, we found that infection by nematodes ranged from 0 to 2720 eggs/g between and within 26 male and 45 female elephants over the 4-year study period. However, such variation was not linked to any investigated measures of sociality in either males or females. Our findings highlight the need for finer-scale studies, establishing how sociality is limited by, mitigates, or protects against infection in different ecological contexts, to fully understand the mechanisms underlying these pathways. Significance statement Being social involves not only benefits, such as improved health, but also costs, including increased risk of parasitism and infectious disease. We studied the relationship between and three different sociality measures-solitary behaviour, group size, and the proportion of females to males within a group-and infection by gut nematodes (roundworms), using a unique study system of semi-captive working Asian elephants. Our system allows for observing how infection is linked to sociality measures across different social frameworks. We found that none of our social measures was associated with nematode infection in the studied elephants. Our results therefore suggest that here infection is not a large cost to group living, that it can be alleviated by the benefits of increased sociality, or that there are weak infection-sociality associations present which could not be captured and thus require finer-scale measures than those studied here. Overall, more studies are needed from a diverse range of systems that investigate specific aspects of social infection dynamics.

BackgroundHuman immunodeficiency virus (HIV) remains a public health priority in Latin America. While the burden of HIV is historically concentrated in urban areas and high-risk groups, subnational estimates that cover multiple countries and years are missing. This paucity is partially due to incomplete vital registration (VR) systems and statistical challenges related to estimating mortality rates in areas with low numbers of HIV deaths. In this analysis, we address this gap and provide novel estimates of the HIV mortality rate and the number of HIV deaths by age group, sex, and municipality in Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Mexico.MethodsWe performed an ecological study using VR data ranging from 2000 to 2017, dependent on individual country data availability. We modeled HIV mortality using a Bayesian spatially explicit mixed-effects regression model that incorporates prior information on VR completeness. We calibrated our results to the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017.ResultsAll countries displayed over a 40-fold difference in HIV mortality between municipalities with the highest and lowest age-standardized HIV mortality rate in the last year of study for men, and over a 20-fold difference for women. Despite decreases in national HIV mortality in all countries-apart from Ecuador-across the period of study, we found broad variation in relative changes in HIV mortality at the municipality level and increasing relative inequality over time in all countries. In all six countries included in this analysis, 50% or more HIV deaths were concentrated in fewer than 10% of municipalities in the latest year of study. In addition, national age patterns reflected shifts in mortality to older age groups-the median age group among decedents ranged from 30 to 45years of age at the municipality level in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico in 2017.ConclusionsOur subnational estimates of HIV mortality revealed significant spatial variation and diverging local trends in HIV mortality over time and by age. This analysis provides a framework for incorporating data and uncertainty from incomplete VR systems and can help guide more geographically precise public health intervention to support HIV-related care and reduce HIV-related deaths.

In recent years, genome-wide association studies have identified 58 independent risk loci for coronary artery disease (CAD) on the autosome. However, due to the sex-specific data structure of the X chromosome, it has been excluded from most of these analyses. While females have 2 copies of chromosome X, males have only one. Also, one of the female X chromosomes may be inactivated. Therefore, special test statistics and quality control procedures are required. Thus, little is known about the role of X-chromosomal variants in CAD. To fill this gap, we conducted a comprehensive X-chromosome-wide meta-analysis including more than 43,000 CAD cases and 58,000 controls from 35 international study cohorts. For quality control, sex-specific filters were used to adequately take the special structure of X-chromosomal data into account. For single study analyses, several logistic regression models were calculated allowing for inactivation of one female X-chromosome, adjusting for sex and investigating interactions between sex and genetic variants. Then, meta-analyses including all 35 studies were conducted using random effects models. None of the investigated models revealed genome-wide significant associations for any variant. Although we analyzed the largest-to-date sample, currently available methods were not able to detect any associations of X-chromosomal variants with CAD.

The purpose was to obtain a reliable scoring for growth of unruptured intracranial aneurysms (UIAs) in a long-term follow-up study from variables known at baseline and to compare it with the ELAPSS (Earlier subarachnoid hemorrhage, Location of the aneurysm, Age > 60 years, Population, Size of the aneurysm, and Shape of the aneurysm) score obtained from an individual-based meta-analysis. The series consists of 87 patients with 111 UIAs and 1669 person-years of follow-up between aneurysm size measurements (median follow-up time per patient 21.7, range 1.2 to 51.0 years). These were initially diagnosed between 1956 and 1978, when UIAs were not treated in our country. ELAPSS scores at baseline did not differ between those with and those without aneurysm growth. The area under the curve (AUC) for the receiver operating curve (ROC) of the ELAPSS score for predicting long-term growth was fail (0.474, 95% CI 0.345-0.603), and the optimal cut-off point was obtained at >= 7 vs. = 4 vs.